Alexander Kushner

Alexander Semyonovich Kushner (Russian: Алекса́ндр Семёнович Ку́шнер, born 14 September 1936, Leningrad) is a Russian poet from Saint Petersburg.

Kushner was born in Leningrad into a Russian-Jewish family; his father was a military engineer. He graduated from Herzen University, and later, between 1959 and 1969, taught Russian literature. After that he became a full-time writer and poet. Since then he published about 15 collections of his poetry and two books of his essays. In 1965 he became a member of the Writers' Union, in 1987 joined the Russian PEN Center. He is also editor-in-chief of Biblioteka poeta (the "Library of the Poet" series). His only son Eugene and his family live in Israel.

In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two.

His poetry resembles that of Acmeists. He usually doesn't write in free verse and seldom experiments or tries to elaborate a new poetic form, preferring to write in a classic, 19th century-like style. The Nobel Prize winner Brodsky once called Kushner "one of the best lyrical poets of the 20th century", adding that his name "is to stand in the line of names dear to the heart of every native Russian speaker"

Translations of Kushner's poetry into English, Italian and Dutch were published in book form; several poems were also translated to German, French, Japanese, Hebrew, Czech and Bulgarian.

His numerous awards include the Russian National Award (1996) and the prestigious Pushkin Prize for poetry, bestowed on him by Russian president Vladimir Putin in 2001. [1]

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