The Obviousness of the South

This edition is the most complete collection of poems by the poet, prose writer, and essayist Shamshad Abdullaev (1957-2024) to date, an informal leader of the «Fergana Poetic School» and one of the most important Russian-speaking poets of the last half-century. Alien to opportunistic definitions and reducible to none of the usual labels (from «meditativeness» to «cinematic quality»), Abdullaev's poetry originates in «naive attachment to what is devoid of existential substance», in the suburbs, where, according to the poet himself, «the impossibility of promises» becomes «a provocative source for the poetic act». The book includes poems by Shamshad Abdullaev from seven posthumous collections, as well as «The Obviousness of the South» - a collection of poems compiled by the poet in the last months of his life. An interview with the poet and editor Vladimir Korkunov and Shamshad Abdullaev, conducted at the end of August 2024, is published in the appendix.