Shards from the Polar Ice (ePub)

Lydia Grigorieva has been one of Russia's leading poets for half a century, the author of 15 highly acclaimed books of poetry and two novels in verse, and the creator of her own new genre of work, which she calls 'Photopoetry' which combines her own photographs and poems. She is a member of many major literary bodies, and her work has been widely translated. Her book of poems 'Celestial' was shortlisted for the Buninskaya Prize and her 'Eternal Theme' was finalist for Russian 'Book of the Year' in 2013. She won the Special Prize from the Russian Writers' Union (2010) for the best poetry book of the year for 'Dream in the Garden' and also the im. A. Delviga Prize (2012).

Grigorieva was born next to a small cherry orchard in the Ukraine but a year later was taken to the Arctic Circle, where her father was a reconnaissance pilot. After her father's tragic death in a plane crash on the ice, the little Lidia returned to Ukraine with her mother and wrote her first poems there, aged 15. Already, aged 20 and at the University of Kazan was running foul of the KGB for her unique and 'unsoviet' poetic voice, and she moved to Moscow to be under the radar. Although highly admired among her fellow writers, her work was not published until 1981.

For the last quarter century, Grigorieva has lived in London, where her late husband poet Ravil Bukharaev worked for the BBC World Service, but she has continued to write poetry, and create her own unique garden - a focus of her work - and her reputation in Russia along with her flowers, has grown and grown.