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When Dancing in Odessa was published in the US in 2004, it caused quite a stir, winning the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award and Poetry’s $15,000 Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Now this Arc edition brings Ilya Kaminsky’s surreal yet truthful poetry to audiences on this side of the Atlantic. Deaf since the age of four, Kaminsky’s is a musical, forceful depiction of his Russian-emigrant family, drawing out his tightly-honed domestic settings with both humour and torment.
“Kaminsky is more than a promising poet; he is a poet of promise fulfilled. I am in awe of his gifts.” – Carolyn Forche
“Ilya Kaminsky’s poems are sometimes deliriously happy and sometimes full of horror, but they are always immense in their ideas and their reach.” – The Jerusalem Post
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa in the former USSR in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the US government. His Ecco Anthology of International Poetry was published by Harper Collins in 2010 (ISBN 9780061583247). He lives in San Diego.