Authors

Discussion

The 2021 recipient of the prestigious Arkadii Dragomoschenko Prize for avant-garde poetry, Dordzhi Dzhaldzhireev (b. 1996) is one of today’s most boundary-pushing poets writing in Russian. Born in Elista, Kalmykia, Dzhaldzhireev weaves together influences from both European/Russian and Kalmyk culture, challenging centralized notions of what Russian-language writing looks like. This paper focuses on a common comparison made between Dzhaldzhireev’s poetics and those of the late Soviet underground poet Mikhail Eremin. Both poets are noted for their densely constructed texts and their use of highly specialized vocabulary sets across their works. Notably, Eremin has earned the title of “poet of the dictionary.” My paper acknowledges the similarities between the poets’ “bookish” or “philological” aesthetics but focuses on the way Dzhaldzhireev deviates from his supposed “predecessor.” In particular, I focus on Eremin’s use of the metaphor “plant life IS linguistic form” (i.e. sentences are trees, word roots etc.) and the way that Dzhaldzhireev’s poetics of decentralization deviate from this essential metaphor. I draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome to explore Dzhladzhireev’s alternative vision of the interrelationship between language and the natural world and his larger move away from hegemonic traditions of Russian-language writing.