Requiem and Poem without a Hero

I first found Akhmatova in a TLS review of her great and tragic sequence 'Requiem'. As I'd learned Russian as a young National Serviceman I decided to try my hand at translating her. Over the decades I have had spells of such work, and for me it's been like a young sculptor working in the studio of Donatello. Or a young painter in the studio of Rembrandt.

All my Akhmatova translations are collected in two editions: Akhmatova: Selected Poems (Penguin) and in the Everyman Pocket Poets series.