November 3, 2023: A reading and conversation with Dinara Rasuleva as part of the poetry series “OUTSIDE: Russian Poets Abroad Speak.” This occasional series, hosted by Polina Barskova, gives a platform to poets who have chosen to leave Russia, poets of different generations, destinations, and orientations. The poets read in Russian, and available English translations are shown on screen simultaneously.
The series is organized by Polina Barskova (UC Berkeley) and Catherine Ciepiela (Amherst College) under the aegis of the Amherst Center for Russian Culture.
Dinara Rasuleva (she/they) is a poetess based in Berlin and born in Kazan, Tatarstan. Dinara writes in Tatar, Russian, English and German — languages she uses every day. Their poetry has been described as decolonial and feminist writing, as expressionist poetry and performance poetry. Their first book of poems, Su, was published by Babel publishing house in 2021. They have participated in European poetry festivals, and their work has appeared in Stadtsprachen, Words without Borders, Feminist Translocalities, Wakat, Articulation and more.
In 2022, Dinara began the Lostlingual project, an investigation of the loss of her native Tatar language through translingual abstract poetry. In 2023, she started TEL:L laboratories for writings in native, forgotten or stolen languages. Dinara does workshops on this topic for decolonial conferences and different institutions, including the Goethe Institute and Literarisches Colloquium Berlin.