Multilingual Poetics: Alexandra Petrova

Alexandra Petrova was born in Saint Petersburg when it still was called Leningrad. She studied in Tartu, and in 1993 she immigrated to Jerusalem. Since 1998 she has lived in Rome. Her three volumes of poetry are Liniia otryva (Point of Detachment or Edge of the Precipice, 1994), Vid na zhitel’stvo (License to Live, Residence Permit or A View on Existence, with introduction by Alexandr Goldshtejn, 1999), Tol’ko derevia (Only the trees, introduction by Stephanie Sandler, 2008). In 2001, she published a philosophical operetta entitled Pastukhi Dolly (The Shepherd of Dolly), a play in ten acts that recounts a tale of cloning in pastoral terms. Her works have been published in leading Russian magazines, such as Znamia, Mitin zhurnal, Zerkalo, and Zvezda. Her prose and poems have been translated into several languages. She was short-listed for the Andrei Belyj Prize in 1999 and in 2008.