Hailed by Gloria Steinem as “a lexicon of dissent that can be shared far and wide", F Letter assembles the feminist poets who have palpably changed the Russian language over
the last decade. Against the backdrop of state violence and oppression, this is electric dissent
in pursuit of a democratic, egalitarian future. A lexicon for revolution worldwide.
But this poetry's brilliance lies in its rhythm, energy, and depth of emotion—in its universal
relevance rather than applied politics. As Eileen Myles writes in their foreword, "there are lines
like a curse that yodel radiantly out of the toothy mouth of the curser…lines that are just so
fucking metonymic in their grace…I've been invited to witness. To smell the crowd and be
charged by history." F Letter takes its name from the Russian-language journal F pis'mo. Since 2017, this has been
the center of feminist and LGBTQ+ writing, protest, and activism across Eastern Europe and
Russia. It is rare that literature can wholly reinvent a language—and yet, F Letter has done so at
the scale of the letter itself, coining, for instance, the "feminitives" that are now an everydaycontroversy
in Russian society.
The danger that the authors confront for such transgressive work cannot be underestimated.
Many—like F pis'mo's founding editor, Galina Rymbu—are forced into exile under threat of
draconian prison sentences, on charges of "pornography" and "gay propaganda."" Others have
been added to the "kill list" of the hate group, Pila, which was likely behind the murder of Yelena
Gregoriva. And yet, these writers continue to organize—most recently leading the protest
against the arrest of the young illustrator Yulia Tsvetkova. "My Vagina," the last poem in the
anthology, was composed by Rymbu as its rallying cry. Far from a symbolic act, the poem has, in
the space of weeks, been translated into twelve languages and taken up by feminist and
LGBTQ+ causes worldwide.
Appropriately, what concerns Rymbu are the contemporary uses of poetry as "a form of public
speech and thought, written as if there is someone else present, someone concrete." The aim is
that, out of the depths of the failed post-Soviet project, a book itself can create "islands of
freedom." A little orange-book that exists as a grounds for feminist movements globally.
As has been noted in The New Inquiry, "publishing these poets presents its own set of
difficulties". Russian gag laws effectively censor their work at home and make it less visible
abroad. For this reason, isolarii has chosen to print the anthology as a bilingual edition. To bring
these poets the attention they deserve and solidify their place in that long tradition—from Baudelaire to Rushdie—of subversive, explosive verse.
