Anthony Kudryavitsky born in Moscow on 17 August 1954, better known by his pen name Anatoly Kudryavitsky[1] (Russian Анатолий Исаевич Кудрявицкий), is a Russian-Irish novelist, poet and literary translator.
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Kudryavitsky's father, Jerzy, was a Polish naval officer who served in the Russian fleet based in the Far East,[2] while his mother Nelly Kitterick, a music teacher, was the daughter of an Irishman from County Mayo who ended up in one of Stalin’s concentration camps.[3] His aunt Isabel Kitterick, also a music teacher as well as a musicologist, published the critically acclaimed book titled "Chopin’s Lyrical Diary".[4] Having lived in Russia and Germany, Kudryavitsky now lives in South Dublin.
Educated at Moscow Medical University, Kudryavitsky later studied Irish history and culture. In the 1980s he worked as a researcher in immunology, a journalist, and a literary translator. He started writing poetry in 1978, but under the communists was not permitted to publish his work openly. American poet Leonard Schwartz described him as
"a samizdat poet who had to put up with a good deal of abuse during the communist period and who has only been able to publish openly in recent years. In his 'poetics of silence' the words count as much for the silence they make possible as for what they say themselves" [5]
Since 1989 Kudryavitsky has published a number of short stories and seven collections of his Russian poems, the most recent being In the White Flame of Waiting (1994), The Field of Eternal Stories (1996), Graffiti (1998), and Visitors’ Book (2001). He has also published his translations from English into Russian of such authors and poets as John Galsworthy (Jocelyn), William Somerset Maugham (Up at the Villa), Stephen Leacock (Selected Stories), Arthur Conan Doyle (Selected Stories), Emily Dickinson (Selected Poems); Stephen Crane (Collected Poems); Jim Morrison (Selected Poems), all in book form.
From 1993 till 1995 he was a member of the meloimaginists poetry group. In the mid-1990s he edited the literary magazines Strelets/The Archer and Inostrannaya Literatura/Foreign Literature, as well as Poetry of Silence (A & B Press, 1998), an anthology of new Russian poetry. Two other anthologies, Zhuzhukiny Deti (NLO Publications, 2000), an anthology of Russian short stories and prose miniatures written in the second half of the twentieth century, and the anthology entitled Imagism (Progress Publishing, 2001) were published more recently. The latter won The Independent/Ex Libris Best Translated Book of the Year Award in 2001. Kudryavitsky is a member of the Russian Writers’ Union and Irish and International PEN. In 1998 he founded the Russian Poetry Society and became its first President (1998–1999). Joseph Brodsky described him as "a poet who gives voice to Russian Silence".[6]
Soon after moving to Germany in 1999, Kudryavitsky was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Federation of Poetry Associations. His five-year term ended in 2004.
Since moving to Ireland in 2002, Kudryavitsky has written poetry, especially haiku, predominantly in English, but continues to write fiction in Russian.[7] He also worked as a creative writing tutor giving classes to members of Ireland’s minority language communities.[8] His book of English poems entitled Shadow of Time was published in Ireland in 2005 (Goldsmith Press, Ireland). Irish poet Iggy McGovern mentioned Shadow of Time among the best Irish books of the year (Poetry Ireland Review Newsletter, January/February 2006). A Night in the Nabokov Hotel, the anthology of contemporary Russian poetry translated into English by Kudryavitsky, was published in 2006 by Dedalus Press. He has also translated more than forty contemporary Irish, English and American poets into Russian, and his own work has been translated into nine languages. He won the Edgeworth Prize for Poetry in 2003, and in 2005 was shortlisted for the Robert Graves Poetry Award.
In 2007, he re-established Okno, a Russian-language poetry magazine, as a web-only journal after a lapse of some 83 years.[9]
In 2008, according to Indymedia, Kudryavitsky exposed Jack Harte, a member of the Board and later chairman of the Irish Writers' Centre, who had his book of short stories published in Russia by the stalinist Voskresenye Publishing, while brokering the publication of a book by the director of Voskresenye, Georgy Pryakhin, in Ireland and organizing the latter's visit to Dublin, which included a reading in the Irish Writers' Centre. This event created controversy and resulted in protests, as Pryakhin is not only the author of the novel titled "Khazar Dreams" that many consider to be anti-Semitic but also one of the leaders of the nationalist Russian Revival Party that took the name of the illegal Russian fascist party, which existed in the USSR, and abroad among the Russian expatriates, in the 1930s.[10]
Also in 2008, Kudryavitsky's novel titled "The Case-Book of Inspector Mylls" was published in Moscow by Zakharov Books. This satirical novel is set in London, and bears the markings of the magic realism genre. In early 2009, another magic realist work of his, a short novel entitled "A Parade of Mirrors and Reflections", appeared in "Deti Ra", a Russian literary magazine. It is set in Grodno, and deals with the effects of human cloning. His novella titled "A Journey of a Snail to the Centre of the Shell" appeared in the same "Deti Ra" magazine in July 2010. It is an extended haibun about the life and writings of a fictitious 19th century Japanese haiku poet.
Kudryavitsky was one of the judges for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.[11]
Kudryavitsky started writing haiku in Ireland. He won the Highly Recommended Prize at the Samhain International Haiku Competition 2005 with this haiku:
In 2006 Kudryavitsky founded the Irish Haiku Society with Siofra O'Donovan and Martin Vaughan. He is the current chairman of the society and editor of Shamrock Haiku Journal.
In 2007, another one of his haiku won Honourable Mention at the Vancouver International Cherry Blossom Festival:
In the same year he was awarded Capoliveri Haiku 2007 Premio Internazionale di Poesia (International Haiku Award, Italy). In 2008, he won the Suruga Baika Haiku Prize of Excellence (Japan) with the following haiku:
He has also translated haiku from several European languages into English.