Old Songs

Born in Moscow in 1949, OlgaSedakova emerged as a leading writer of the late Soviet period. Since 2014, shehas been an outspoken critic of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Her writing bearswitness to the values of generosity, attention, and non-violence. The poems in OldSongs construct a world shaped by these values, forming a lyric sequenceinfused with folk wisdom and anchored in moral courage. It is a world broughtinto being by song, the kind passed down over cradles and on walks through thegarden. These poems find their way into your memory and accompany you on yourway.

Sedakova is not only one ofRussia’s most revered contemporary poets but also a scholar and essayist. Oftencompared to figures such as Czesław Miłosz, she has,with this volume (according to Rowan Williams), succeeded in “conveying thesense of a forgotten directness of perception and relation—not a lostsimplicity, exactly, but a larger and more human world. . . .”