Lev Rubinstein

Black and white photo of Lev Rubinstein outdoors, a building with Russian letters is blurred in the background. Rubinstein is wearing glasses, a flat cap, and a thick scarf.

Lev Rubinstein. Courtesy of Natalia Senatorova, via Wikimedia Commons.

Lev Rubinstein was a poet, performer, essayist, and journalist. Born in 1947, he was a founding figure of the Moscow Conceptualism movement, and a prominent voice in the unofficial Soviet art scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He gained recognition for his genre-defying “note-card poems.”

His books in English translation include Thirty-five New Pages, translated by Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011); Catalog of Comedic Novelties, also translated by Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2004); and Here I Am: Performance Poems, translated by Joanne Turnbull (Glas, 2001). In Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2014), which Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinksy translated, Rubinstein’s note-card poems appear in their entirety for the first time.

Rubinstein was awarded the Andrei Bely Prize in 1999. His work has been translated into English, French, German, and Swedish.