Aleksandr Vadimovich Skidan (Александр Вадимович Скидан, born December 29, 1965, in Leningrad, USSR) is an author of Russian poetry and a translator of both American poetry and American and European literary theory. Skidan is known as one of Russia's most notable contemporary poets.
Life and education
Skidan currently resides in Russia's former capital, Saint Petersburg where he was born and raised. Several years prior to his career (1985-2002), Skidan worked in a gas boiler room, as an operator. Skidan attended the Free University (1989-1992). Skidan later chose to neglect soviet higher education, in protest. Skidan has travelled a lot for his work and to collaborate with other artists. His current marital status is unknown.
Overview of works
Skidan has written poems, essays, and novels. He explores subjects of postmodern Russian poetics. The subjects range from politics (ex. poem, "Kondratievsky Prospect", Red Shifting (2008) pg.65), sexual assault (ex. Travesty, Red Shifting (2008) pg. 3), and modern western influence ("Piercing of the Lower Lip", Red Shifting (2008) pg. 107). Among his many subjects, Skidan introduces themes of freedom, modernity, imagination, visualization, and metaphors to build the architecture of his writing. Skidan is a technical writer, who constantly revises his work. Skidan's work explores political and social aspects of life in post soviet Russia. Skidan also explores themes of dialogue in some of his poems, which not only help the reader to visualize his poetry, but emphasize its hidden meaning.
Out of Skidan's work, five collections of poetry, four books of essays, in addition to one novel have been published in the Russian language, including: "Delirium" (1993) Critical Mass (1995) (collection of essays) "In the Re-Reading" (1998) The Resistance to/of Poetry (2001) (collection of essays) Red Shifting (2006) (collection of poetry) "Dissolution" (2010) Summation of a Poetics (2013) (collection of essays) Theses Toward Politicization of Art and Other Texts (2014) (collection of essays) "Membra disjecta" (2015) Guide to N (2018) (novel) Damp Words Chalk: About Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (2019) (collection of essays) Golem Soveticus: Prigov as Brecht and Warhol in One Persona. Translated into English by Kevin M. F. Platt. (Art, Criticism, Essay, and Poetics) (2020)
Skidan has had many publications in various magazines, such as Volga, Place of Press, Mitin Journal, Comments, October, Banner, New Russian Book, New Literary View, Russian Prose, and Critical Mass.
In addition Skidan has three published anthologies: very short texts, 24 poets and 2 commissars, and Anthology of Russian Verliber.
Red Shifting
Red Shifting is Skidan's collection of poems and written essays which raise the question: what lines are blurred between philosophy and literature, as well as modes of discourse. This work has been described as vigorously avant-garde and experimental, verbally disruptive, and intellectually anchoring all at once. This piece was published by ugly duckling press in January 2008, Translated by Genya Turovskaya.
Skidan's mentor, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, describes Skidan's work Red Shifting as “[s]omnambulistic.” Dragomoshchenko also says " Indeed, Skidan creates dream-poems. What is at play in the dream-poem? Incest and GAS!".
The collection has been expressed in Skidan's critical writing and in his organizations with other writers, philosophers, and critics in part with Chto Delat. Such writers who are also known for having shifted their perspective to entertain to Marxism in the 2000s and 2010s.
Red Shifting reviews
"To read a book this fierce, this honest, to disappear into these beautiful, wrecked songs—and to disappear 'more fully' precisely because they question 'the idea of the wrecked song'—is a singular, moving experience. The poems in Red Shifting, translated beautifully by Genya Turovskaya, display a near-physical, wounding intelligence, an intelligence unflinchingly aware of what it means to think history's recklessness."- Christian Hawkey
"The quote mosaic in Skidan’s poems is a temptation for the sophisticated reader. The temptation to find your own unique subjectivity in the zone of its fundamental impossibility, in the zone of unconditional triumph of impersonal foreign speech, gleaned from a high cultural archive or from a low household vocabulary ... Moreover, the collage principle of writing practiced by him excludes the presence of an authorial lyrical voice. That is why the inevitable explosive effect arises, caused by the uncertainty and decay of the subject of the utterance."- Dmitry Golynko-Wolfson