From Our Readers: Katerina Kuznetzova’s Poems

Katerina Kuznetzova

Katerina Kuznetzova, a young Berlin-based poetess, sent a number of her poems especially for our website. We are publishing them for the first time. We also offer our readers translations of these poems from Yiddish into Russian, made by the poet Yoel Matveyev.

This publication is the first of numerous examples of Yiddish literary works already sent to us by our readers. We will choose the best of these works and publish them here, comment on them, and then discuss them on social media. We encourage our readers to share their Yiddish creativity, be it poems, short stories, memoirs, or translations into Yiddish from any other language. Please send your works to info@yiddish-culture.com. Stay tuned for our future publications on the website!

Katerina Kuznetzova was born in 1989 in Moscow. She started learning Yiddish at the age of 20 and further studied the language in Jerusalem. Since 2016 she has been living in Berlin where she teaches Yiddish and actively participates in the cultural life of local Yiddishists, whose number keeps on growing. She began writing Yiddish poetry in 2018.

Kuznetzova made her debut July 2023 in the literary magazine Yidishland (19th issue). Almost simultaneously with this very publication on our website, some of her other poems were also published in the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern along with Russian translations.

Kuznetzova’s poems are refreshing, talented and versatile, reflecting her deep acquaintance with Jewish and world poetry. Lyrical themes of love and nature are organically combined with her philosophical meditations on life and death, cosmic forces and the magic of human relationships.