Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale

A profoundly moving book-length poem from “Russia’s greatest living poet” (Poetry) and the acclaimed author of In Memory of Memory.

Maria Stepanova was a highly influential figure in Moscow’s cosmopolitan literary scene for many years until Putin strangled it, along with civil liberties and dissent. Written in a frenzy of poetic inspiration, Holy Winter speaks of winter and war, banishment and exile, social isolation and existential abandonment. Here, she masterfully interweaves confusing signals from the media and social networks, love letters, travelogues, and fairy tales, creating a polyphonic evocation of frozen time and its slow thawing.

Like Joseph Brodsky before her, Stepanova has mastered modern poetry’s rich repertoire of forms, moving effortlessly between the traditions of Russian, European, and transatlantic literature. With echoes of Ovid, Pushkin and Lermontov, Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva, and kindred poets like Sylvia Plath, Inger Christensen, and Anne Carson, Stepanova’s is a potent and vital voice like no other.

With an afterword by the author.

Praise for Holy Winter

“In the manner of the Baroque poets, heirs to Ovid too, Maria Stepanova creates a continuous flowing poetics of brilliance and beauty in Holy Winter. The effect is that of a kaleidoscopic collage, made of moving parts that deftly merge the lyrical and historical, making the whole reverberate with sounds and images. The inside is the outside in this icy, claustrophobic world; the existential questions posed by Stepanova go unanswered. Yet there are glimmers of light that shine through the cracks in the ice, the promise of sweetness as ‘Foreign words melt in the cheek / Like sugar cubes’ to lift us out of our collective dark night of the soul.” —Beatriz Hausner, author of She Who Lies Above

“Like a heavy Russian snowfall, Maria Stepanova’s Holy Winter seems to cover everything: survival, dreams, and the anger of the gods. Heavy, but also bright: the brilliance of fresh-fallen snow under clear and boundlessly bright skies. But Stepanova’s dazzling long poem—adroitly ranging across historic borders and lyric traditions—is more than a paean to winter, it is also the promise of a coming spring, the buried but inevitable renewal of what must be. Rendered skilfully for English readers in Sasha Dugdale’s fluent translation, Holy Winter is an essential book for our time, burning with wonder and smouldering with dissent.” —Paul Vermeersch, author of Shared Universe: New and Selected Poems 1995-2020

Press Coverage

“The moving, polyvocal latest from Stepanova is a book-length snowscape sequence that blends voices of fracture and love, evoking Ovid in exile and other historical touchstones, from Baron Munchausen to Hans Christian Andersen… Bound together by a gently thoughtful steeliness, these poetic utterances are at once plaintive and resolute.” —Publishers Weekly

Read an Excerpt from Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova, Translated by Sasha Dugdale —Open Book

“Holy Winter is as much about the practice of writing poetry, and its place in a riven world, as it is about exile and anxiety over geopolitical fractures.” —Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

Two Poems: Holy Winter by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale —All Lit Up