What is the significance of this work to you?

Galina: It captured the day in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the moment in front of Van Gogh's painting, when its colors and textures walked off the canvas, permeated the museum room and mingled with onlookers, and another moment, one in Guggenheim, when I realized that I could hear the musical rhythm behind the visual image.

Valentin: I translate, in particular, the American poetry and like what Galina Itskovich is writing. So it was quite natural to translate one work in Russian and, much later, accept Galina's proposal to translate a few of her poetic works in English.

What is the significance of the form you chose for this work?

Galina: Paintings themselves choose the form. For example, the airy, vast "Wheat Field" couldn't be squeezed into stanzas and called for free verse. In the case of a bilingual author, visual works crossing the boundary into a language based art form also choose the language—could it be based on previous memories and associations?

Valentin: That was easy—I did not choose a form, it was the author who did, my task was to follow and not spoil the original.

What was your process for creating this work?

Galina: Going from the poetic freedom to the solemn, disciplined art of translation—but texts bounced off each other, and, while reading Valentin's translation, I realized a thing or two and revised a few ideas in my original text. Working on translations together is like parenting: we go through our own strong emotional responses to each others' suggestions, disagree or compromise, but eventually come up with a complete, more or less well-rounded "kiddo" of a poem!

Valentin: Galina's work sounds excellent in Russian, my challenge was to find an adequate translation, as close to the original meaning, as possible, but also giving some idea how it sounds. We often translate together, comparing our variants and even published a book of double translations, Women's Poetry of America, revealing to a reader how we work together by adding comments and excerpts from our correspondence to each poem.

Galina Itskovich graduated from the Hunter College School of Social Work. She practices psychotherapy, and teaches and writes poetry and prose in two languages. Her work appeared in Poetica, Asian Signature, Unlikely Stories, Cardinal Points, Former People, in almanacs Global Insides (in print) and Contemporary Jewish Writing, and elsewhere. She is the author of one book of poems (in Russian). Galina Itskovich lives in New York City.

Valentin Emelin graduated from Harvard with a Master’s in Public Administration. He is the head of the environmental crime program at GRID-ARENDAL. His translations from English, German, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian were published in The Write Launch  (USA), InterPoezia (USA), The Emigrant Lire (Belgium), Vyshgorod (Estonia) and elsewhere; original poetry published in Fowl Feathered Review (Canada), Druzhba Narodov (Russia) and White Raven (Russia). He co-authored the collection of translations, "American Women's Poetry" (with G. Itskovich). He lives in Arendal, Norway.