Interim Report

We have just returned from Moscow where we spent 10 days exploring the city and its underground railway network. We visited over a third of the 176 stations on the Moscow Metro, went to the Moscow Metro Museum, interviewed the Director of the Museum and the grandson of one of the original Metro architects.

We watched the Communist Party demonstration in Revolution Square on May Day, supporters at a football game (Lokomotiv Moscow nil, Spartak Nalchik nil), worshippers celebrating Orthodox Easter, old men in a Banya (bath-house) and boat trippers on the Moscow River. We also visited the Bulgakov Museum, the Patriarch Ponds, Tsaritsino Park, Red Square, the VDNK Park, the Vernissage, the Gagarin Monument, the Sparrow Hills and the OGI collective. We met with artists Dima Topolsky and Aleksandra Paperno, with Tanya Ilyina from the British Council, and with the publisher and editor Tom Birchenough.

We have returned with copious notes and books, hundreds of photographs and many hours of audio recording. The next stage is to write the poems over the next six months. Even if we only write half what we have planned, we are confident that it is going to be a very strong book indeed.