Three Men on The Strand (well, two)

Listeners to the World Service will have been baffled by a recent item on their arts forum The Strand, in which two poets gibbered at each other about the Moscow Metro before reading some of their so-called verse. Thankfully, presenter Harriet Gilbert brought proceedings to a smart close, but for those intrigued by such matters, the listen again facility is available here.

The BBC's Russian Service has also had to put up recently with one of these poets barking on about some book he'd personally produced on the matter -- if we can find any details of broadcast, we'll be sure to post them.

In other news, a recent meeting in Newcastle's very own Victorian hamam produced the tri bradyagi's new idiot motto, 'Озорство или Cмерть'. This is supposed to mean 'Mischief or Death,' and they have apparently already begun carving it into their forearms with compasses and biro.

However it is already evident that they are backing down on both options. A substitute slogan 'Poems or Hangovers' has already been vetoed on the premiss that they've never had to choose between them before.

Some feedback from around the globe:

'Dear droog, what a smelly book! It's a feast, from the underground bookstores with people who see everything in black and white, to the missing banya with Bill H having lost his map (for Hades perhaps), and Andy C with no immediate access to venik sticks. Now I'll stop jumping from stranitsa to stranitsa and start from page 1. Bolshoe spasibo!’
Kristin Dimitrova, poet (Bulgaria)

‘I can't get over the life in the book. It danced in my hands as I read and wouldn't lie still for hours afterward. You make your journey fun, fun, fun, and far more penetrating, in its real language in a time of "war is peace" and false awards, than Radishchev's road trip to Moscow some 230 years ago. The constant play among you and the moving in-moving out with the people you meet and the scenes you find yourselves in are a whole social portrait in a 100-page travelogue. Brilliant!’
Frank Reeves, poet (US)

Remember, you too can reach this happy station in life by simply buying the book, then (though this is not strictly necessary) reading it.

Myetrodog!

The metrodog website is entirely in Russian, but for those who, like me, either can't read Russian, or are prepared to spend hours transliterating Cyrillic into English they then can't read either, it does have lots of pics of Metro dogs. These invariably look mad, desperate or dazed (visitors to 'Tri brodyagi' sometimes describe themselves as having the same reactions).

'Sobachki,' as I understand it (see first sentence for amount of credence to give to this), not only means 'dog', but also the @ sign, a symbol for which we in miserable English have no word. I imagine it as having something to do with a dog curling up to go to sleep in the warmth of the Metro, but then this could also apply to a number of flexible mammals with tails. Squirrels, for instance. There are uncountable hordes of those in the tunnels.

You say 'bradyashki', we say 'brodyagi'

As the song says 'potaeto, potahto, tomaeto, tomahto/ let's retitle this blog'. A Russian friend has pointed out that our previous title, 'Tri Bradyashki na Metro' was barely Russian -- 'brodyazhka' a diminutive for 'brodyaga' often refers to female vagrants, while 'na Metro' is more of a Ukrainian construction. So our title actually implied 'Three big girls' blouses who might as well be on the Kiev metro for all they know'. This, whilst being more accurate than we realised, clearly will not do. But I'd still like to keep a distinction between the name of this site, now firmly both Muscovite and masculine, and the title of the impending book, which remains 'Troye v metro' -- Three Men on the Metro.

Tri linkniks

The lovely WAM book we picked up at Ismailovsky Market on routes around the Metro is mentioned here:
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/178681/

Tatanya Federova, who was a construction worker on the Metro and delivered a speech commended by Stalin, is interviewed here (where there's also a realplayer recording of her speech):
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/redflag/fedorovatranscript.html

Thirdly, the Metro completes its Biblical span with an anniversary celebrated here:
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/142275/

Vichod

This year (2008), from St George's Day (April 23rd) through the Orthodox Easter(April 28th), May Day and up to the election of Putin's successor (May 3rd), three British poets went on a short trip round and round the underground. This blog charts the results: notes, photos, sounds, drafts, links and factoids.

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The Moscow Metro offers a singular perspective on the Russian psyche. Constructed over thirty years, largely during the Stalinist period, to provide transport, shelter, warmth, and a peculiarly Soviet grandeur, these 'People's Palaces' are at once stunning feats of architecture - packed with the minutiae of period iconography to the point of kitsch - and fascinating temples to the quotidian, where all Muscovite life rushes before you.

Its stations are named after the central principles and events of Russian society; they are named after its great writers, artists and scientists. They are constructed using marbles and materials from all over the vast hinterland of Mother Russia. The Metro is at once a microcosm of Russia itself, and a symbol of the infernal and purgatorial circles through which the Russian people have passed.

In the year of yet another significant transition in Russian life, when Putin officially hands over the reins of power to his successor, Medvedov, this project by three British poets will attempt to circumnavigate not just Moscow, but the cycles of cultural history which the Metro represents and continues to evoke.

This is a project which, like the Metro itself, combines multiple levels and appeals to a broad audience. The structural principle of the journey allows for both individual vignette and continuing narrative. The successive layers of the Metro, floor beneath floor, is echoed in the transition between forms - history, non-fiction, drama and poetry are all represented.

Andy Croft, Bill Herbert and Paul Summers variously write, edit and translate poetry ; they make films and public art; they are reviewers and anthologists, critics and cultural historians. They are also completely out of their depth, idealists abroad, babes in the abyss. Like their predecessors in that boat on the Thames (Jerome K Jerome’s novel is known as трое в лодке in Russia), these three Brits are adrift in a very foreign medium, and their collective response - poetic, comic, political, dramatic - will offer a unique insight into a culture poised between retrenchment and convulsive change.