Russian poet, novelist and filmmaker Yevgeny Yevtushenko will make his fifth visit to the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 3-4, to give a poetry reading and show one of his films as part of the UWSP Performing Arts Series.
Recently honored at the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. for his contribution to Russian/American relations, Yevtushenko has been called one of “the world’s most widely admired living writers” and “the Russian mixture of Walt Whitman and Bob Dylan.” His poetry and prose has been translated into 72 languages and he has visited and performed in 96 countries.
Yevtushenko’s reading will be performed on Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 7:30 p.m. at Sentry Theater. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for senior citizens and $6 for youth. UWSP students with ID may buy tickets in advance for $4.50 or be admitted free the day of the show if seats remain.
Tickets may be purchased through the University Information and Tickets Office in the Dreyfus University Center, by calling 715-346-4100 or 800-838-3378 or online at www.uwsp.edu/centers/uit/ordering.asp. Visa, MasterCard and Discover are accepted.
Yevtushenko’s film, “Stalin’s Funeral,” will be shown on Wednesday, Nov. 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 221 of the Noel Fine Arts Center. The showing is free and open to the public.
Born in Siberia in 1933, Yevtushenko was first published in 1949. He was nationally known at age 22 and became the best-known poet of the post-Stalin generation of the 50s and 60s, giving readings on Russian squares and in stadiums that gave voice to a generation that sought release from years of repression. One of his most famous and controversial poems, “Babi Yar,” denounced government anti-Semitism.
Yevtushenko was the first Russian to break the Iron Curtain when he began reciting poetry in the West. He first came to America in 1961, speaking at Harvard University. He toured the United States in 1966 and performed at Madison Square Garden in 1972. He has also performed in the Kremlin Theater and Carnegie Hall.
He wrote and directed the films “Kindergarten” in 1982 and “Stalin’s Funeral” in 1990 and co-wrote “Soy Cuba,” released in 1964. He has also written two novels, “Wild Berries” in 1984 and “Don’t Die Before You’re Dead” in 1995, as well as an anthology of Russian poetry and many literary essays.
Yevtushenko served in the first freely elected Russian parliament from 1988 to 1991, fighting against the war in Afghanistan and against censorship. In 1991, during a hard-liners’ attempt to overthrow the Russian government, he read his poetry from the balcony of the Russian White House to 200,000 defenders of freedom.
He received the American Liberties Medal from the America Jewish Committee and the Defenders of Freedom Medal in Russia. He was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1987 and was the first non-American to receive the Walt Whitman Poet-in-Residence Award. In 2000, the Russian Academy of Sciences named a minor planet after him and in 2005 he won the Premio Grinzane Cavour, a prestigious literary prize, in Italy. That same year his boyhood home in Zima Junction, Siberia, was dedicated as a historic site and permanent museum.
In 2008, he celebrated his 75th birthday at Olympic Stadium in Moscow with an audience of 12,000 people. Yevtushenko now divides his time between Russia and the United States. He and his family reside in Tulsa, Okla., where he teaches Russian-European cinema and Russian literature at the University of Tulsa and his wife, Maria, teaches at the Edison School.
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