Peter France

"Osip Mandelstam has become an almost mythical figure of modern Russian poetry, his work treasured all over the world for its lyrical beauty and innovative, revolutionary engagement with the dark times he lived through during the Stalinist era. It was while exiled in the city of Voronezh, the black earth region of Russia, that his poetry, as Joseph Brodsky wrote, transformed into "a poetry of high velocity and exposed nerves...becoming more a song...