According to Russian – American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky, poetry is the highest form of locution and more than any other art, poetry is a form of sentimental education. He states that ‘at certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise couldn’t be retained by the mind’. Brodsky believes that ‘any poem, regardless of its subject – is in itself an act of love, not so much of an author for his subject as of language for a piece of reality’. On our regular meetings, devoted to the poetic word, we will read poetry, remembering Russian and foreign poets (Pushkin, Baratynsky, Tyutchev, Fet, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Brodsky, Slutsky, Levitansky, Samoilov, Yeats, Whitman, Auden, Frost, Eliot, Milosz and many others), discussing importance of poetry in our daily lives and talk about time and ourselves. Also we will think about the extent to which poetry helps to develop our artistic imagination and aesthetic relation to reality. Led by Elena Neznamova – Associate Professor, MA in Psychosocial Studies – Birkbeck, University of London, Fulbright-Kennan Institute Research Scholar. (In English) Please join us on Monday, January 15 at 7 p.m.