Paper-Thin Skin - (In the Grip of Strange Thoughts) by Aigerim Tazhi (Paperback)

About the Book

One of the first Kazakhstani women poets to gain international attention, Tazhi offers incisive and intimate observations in these seemingly spare poems that "pour out a little from an overflowing heart."

Book Synopsis

Paper-thin Skin is the first bilingual collection (in Russian and English) by Aigerim Tazhi, who has broken ground as a Kazakhstani woman poet by gaining widespread international attention. Fish, insects, birds, the sea, the sky, humans seeking connection, and death figure frequently in these succinct poems, as do windows, mirrors, and eyes: these are poems of observation and deep reflection. Tazhi gently insists that we look at words and the world "in the eye," as she seeks to create what translator J. Kates calls a "mystic community of communication."

Review Quotes

"For a debut poetry collection, Aigerim Tazhi's Paper-Thin Skin is a work of stunning originality." -- Elmira Elvazova, Massachusetts Review

" This is a beautifully translated volume that neither exoticizes nor renders out the joy of reading poetry grounded in another place and language." -- Alison Mandaville, World Literature Today

"...[Tazhi's] poetry is enjoyable for the pure inventiveness of her images and observations. The collection is riddled with vivid, often intriguing images and witty one liners." -- Belinda Cooke, Poetry Salzburg Review

"Nevertheless, Central Asian literature in English translation remains rare and since Tazhi's current home of Almaty is equidistant between the capitals of Russia and China, a leading Kazakh poet, for such Tazhi evidently is, deserves to be read as much to her East as to her West. -- Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books

"A beautiful bilingual book, produced with care and attention to white space around the poems, Paper-Thin Skin speaks to layers of loss-from personal and private to the loss of the country (I read these poems in the post-Soviet context) to climate change and the loss of habitats." -- Olga Zilberbourg, Punctured Lines

About the Author

Aigerim Tazhi (Айгерим Тажи) is one of the best-known contemporary Kazakh poets. She is the author of БОГ-О-СЛОВ (THEO-LOG-IAN, which could also be read as GOD O' WORDS) (Musagetes, Kazakhstan, 2004) and the bilingual poetry book Бумажная кожа/Paper-Thin Skin (Russian-English, Zephyr Press, USA, 2019, translated by J. Kates). Tazhi won the International Literary Steps Prize in Poetry in 2003; in 2011, she was a finalist for the International Debut Prize in Poetry; in 2019, she was included in the prize list of the International Literary Poetry Award and named a finalist of the International Literary Voloshin Contest. Her work has been featured in many prominent literary magazines and anthologies; and her poems have been translated into English, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Armenian, Uzbek and other languages. In 2009 Tazhi created a continuing project of literary installations and performances, Visible Poetry. She lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

J. Kates is a poet, literary translator and co-director of Zephyr Press. The author of several collections of his own poetry, he is also the translator of more than a dozen books by Russian and French poets, including Tatiana Shcherbina, Mikhail Aizenberg, Mikhail Yeryomin, Aleksey Porvin, Jean-Pierre Rosnay, and Sergey Stratanovsky. He co-translated four books of Latin American poetry, was the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and was the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation, and a Käpylä Translation Prize.