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SEPTEMBER 2020 Updates 1.. SRF AGM. Members should by now received a communication about the SRF AGM together with instructions and papers. Please e-mail me at the SRF e-mail address if you have not received this information. Special thanks are due to David Caldwell, SRF Secretary, and to David Brew, SRF Trustee, for organising this at very short notice and so efficiently. We do still hope to hold our new series of "Cultural Conversations" at a later date, depending, of course, on Scottish Government guidelines... 2. The joint SRF event held on 23rd August with "Starling" was a great success and plans are being made to follow it up in some way. If any SRF members have any special interest in Gaelic or if you would like to be involved in this follow-up event please do get in touch via the SRF e-mail address. 3. Jenny Carr, former Chair of SRF, is currently involved in an important Russian teaching project. To find out more about the work she is doing please see: https://www.russianinscotland.com/new-short-course-for-schools.html Once we can organise meetings again we do hope to invite Jenny to speak about this project. 4. Members may recall that Miroslava Bronnikova was elected last year as the first ever Russian to be a Director of the Edinburgh Fringe. While the Fringe, sadly, did not run this year, we hope at SRF to support Miroslava in some of her projects, one of which is to bring her production of "Master and Margarita" to Edinburgh...Watch this space for more news... 5. Victim Support Scotland has been in touch with us - they need Russian speakers as translators (and those who speak other East and Central European Languages) to help them in their work. Please contact us at our SRF e-mail address if you are interested. 6 CEES, like most buildings at Glasgow University is still closed. We will notify members of any change but please, for the foreseeable future, do not send any SRF mail to CEES but contact us via the SRF e-mail address. Thank you. We will advise members whenever the Building reopens. 7. September has been designated as "World Kid Lit Month". "Starling" will be hosting its next event on September 29th when Ruth Ahmedzai-Kemp will discuss her translation from the Russian entitled "The Raven's Children" (this is currently available in most bookstores). To join this event please see: https://uofglasgow.zoom.us/j/96418110915?pwd=RG1FZKcDRIVCNHJFRW8xSWjWcSs3Zz09 Passcode 306304 Meeting ID 96418110915 Thanks are due to Jenny Carr for providing details of this speaker. 8. As noted above, we are waiting for news of the opening of the Edinburgh Quaker Rooms... We do hope to be able to start the new series of "Cultural Conversations" there in the not-too-distant future! ! We will keep you all informed. Professor Peter France has kindly provided below a "taster" for his talk which, it is hoped, he will give in person later in the year. The next speakers in his series have also agreed to provide short summaries of their talks. 1. "Edwin Morgan and Russian Culture". My talk was to give an overview of Edwin Morgan's translation of Russian poetry, including some memories of my meetings with Eddie, notably the occasions when he met Andrey Voznesensky and Gennady Aygi in Edinburgh. Morgan, the first poet laureate (makar) of Scotland, was a prolific translator of poetry from about twenty European languages into both Scots and English. Translations from Russian bulk large in his 'Collected Translations' (1996). The most famous of these is 'Wi the Haill Voice', his vigorous and inventive transposition of Mayakovsky into Scots. I would have looked at the Mayakovsky alongside Morgan's always faithful translations from Pushkin and from Voznesensky and Aygi, two very different younger contemporaries. Professor Peter France, (University of Edinburgh) 2. Our second speaker in this series will be Dr Shamil' Khairov (University of Glasgow) who will deliver a "Meet the Author" session to launch his new book "Russian for All Occasions" which he co-authored with Dr. John Dunn. Dr Khairov will offer a very humorous introduction, looking at his own experiences of both learning and teaching the many Slavonic languages he masters and he will reveal some of the "secrets" that prompted him to produce this very special and useful volume...If you want to know what untied shoelaces had to do with this book, well you will have to wait and see...Dr Khairov's talk will combine both a light touch and serious scholarship... 3. Professor Tom Hubbard is no stranger to SRF members and he is one of the great masters of Russo-Scottish connections at many levels. In our third talk in the series Professor Hubbard will examine some new translations of Chekhov's short stories into Scots on which he has been working and he will also present some of his recent work on Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard". Stop press! Dr. Andrea Gullotta has also agreed to speak in this series on his fascinating and ground-breaking research on the GULAG. Watch this space! 8. Peter Harvey, SRF Treasurer, has also updated news of the planned SRF trip to Russia... More details to follow... Honours 2019-2020 Members will wish to congratulate long-standing SRF member, Lieutenant Commander Dairmid Gunn, OBE, on this well-deserved honour. Author of a book on the convoys to Russia during the Second World War, interpreter in the 1950s and posted as assistant naval attache to Moscow in the 1960s, Lieutenant Commander Gunn has served the cause of the promotion of cultural relations between Russia and the UK in a tireless and in an excellent manner. In the 1980s, for example, he was the chairman of the Scottish Branch of the GB-USSR Association and a member of its Council. This has been a splendid start to the summer and warmest wishes and congratulations are passed on to Dairmid! July 2019 MIROSLAVA BRONNIKOVA has recently been elected as the first ever Russian to be on the Board of Directors of the Edinburgh Fringe! Her appointment will be ratified at the AGM to be held on August 21st. Miroslava reveals that her "...love affair with Edinburgh started in 1999 when I first came to visit the city with my family for a couple of days in late August". In 2000 Miroslava spent 3 months studying at St George's School for Girls in Edinburgh and she returned to the city in 2013 to complete a Cambridge CELTA Course. With her husband Ivan she founded a theatre and dance company in Moscow and they are especially proud of their production based on Bulgakov's " Master and Margarita" For information on the two shows Miroslava has at this years Fringe please see https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/all-star-cabaret-the-free-fringe-gala Miroslava's e-mail address is miroslava.bronnikova@gmail.com and she will be very happy to hear from SRF members! |