TIME Profiles Russia's Contemporary Feminist Poets

At TIME, Suyin Haynes writes about Russian poet Galina Rymbu and a collective of feminist and LGBTQ poets called "F pis’mo" or "F Writing." Haynes explains that "F pis’mo, or F Writing [...] formed in 2017 with members intertwining activism with art to galvanize support for civil rights movements in Russia." More: 

The collective began with a writing workshop in January of that year, when Rymbu and other feminist writers, long-frustrated by being overlooked by mainstream Russian media and literature, began meeting in her kitchen at her former home in Saint Petersburg. Gradually, the meetings moved into different spaces like art galleries and bookstores, and in November 2018, F pis’mo started the first ever Russian magazine and online platform dedicated to queer and feminist writing. “We decided to become a group and create a platform to show there are many of us, and to make our work accessible,” Rymbu says. Similar groups have since formed in other Russian cities, including Moscow and Yekaterinburg. In a new poetry anthology called F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry, F pis’mo have created their own space, translating the work of several of the collective’s poets into English for the first time. Work by Rymbu and another poet in the F Letter anthology, Lida Yusupova, has also been translated into English in new separate bilingual publications; Rymbu’s Life in Space collection was published in November, and Yusupova’s The Scar We Know will be publishing in February 2021.

Read on at TIME.