About the Author

Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin, one of the most widely read and loved of all Russian poets, was born in 1895 of a peasant family in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan Province, Central Russia, and died by his own hand in Leningrad on 28 December 1925. New Zealand poet Brasch (1909-1973) travelled to Russia as a young man in 1934. After retiring from the editorship of the literary journal Landfall in 1966, he studied informally in the Russian department of the University of Otago. Peter Soskice (1919-1972), a lecturer there at the time, worked with Brasch to produce these beautiful, vivid translations. Wayne Seyb has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand. In 2011, Broken Shadows, a chapbook of his poems and woodcuts, was published by Cold Hub Press.