Evening with the Petersburg poet held in the Presidential Library’s Poetry Club

As part of the April meeting of the Poetry Club, a evening with Petersburg poet, scientist, playwright, member of the Writers' Union of Russia Olga Atamanova was held.

Olga Atamanova presented her listeners poems from different years, spoke about her views on the current state of literature, gave an assessment of various creative approaches and styles found in the poetry of our time.

The first part of the evening was dedicated to St. Petersburg. Olga Atamanova named favorite places in her hometown, including literary places, such as the Writer's House, the Bookstore of Writers and others. During the conversation, the participants of the evening got familiar with the materials with views of St. Petersburg from the electronic collections of the Presidential Library including "Historical Panorama of St. Petersburg" album.

After the retrospective, photographs of Petersburg streets, closely related to the biography of Olga Atamanova, her childhood memories, studies, and professional activities were shown.

It was also presented a small video film “On the Waves of Poetry” by director Irina Tarasova, the author of the art project “Poetry and music in the lens”. The film contains fragments of speeches by Olga Atamanova, excerpts from concert evenings and creative programs.

Listeners were able to ask the author a variety of questions about life and work, selected poetry collections and books (there are eight books in Olga Atamanova’s oeuvre, she first began writing poetry in 1993).

Olga Atamanova successfully combines poetry and research work, she is engaged in research in the field of linguistics, and also teaches higher mathematics at the Budyonny Military Academy of the Signal Corps. Olga Atamanova answered the question of how she succeeds in combining such dissimilar incarnations in herself: "I think that mathematics is very poetic, it is a very harmonious science, and therefore I chose it in my time".

The evening was held in a warm, friendly atmosphere, received positive feedback from guests. “It was a holiday of the author and the audience”, one of the participants in the meeting, the St. Petersburg poet Lyubov Novikova, shared her impressions.

The Presidential Library’s Poetry Club was established in November 2018. Since then, meetings are held regularly, once a month. The traditional meeting place is the electronic reading room of the Presidential Library.