Elaine Feinstein

Elaine Feinstein (born 24 October 1930, Bootle, Lancashire) is a poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator.

Biography

Born in Bootle, Liverpool, Feinstein was educated at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, a contemporary of Hughes and Plath. She lectured at a training college and then at the University of Essex (1967-70), appointed by Donald Davie. She has worked as a university lecturer, a subeditor, and a freelance journalist. Since 1980, when she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she has lived as a full-time writer. In 1990, she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester. "Alive to her family origins in the Russian-Jewish daspora, she developed a close affinity with the Russian poets of this and the last century." Her versions of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, for which she received three translation awards from the Arts Council, were first published in 1971. She has written fourteen novels, many radio plays, television dramas, and five biographies, including A Captive Lion: the Life of Marina Tsvetaeva (1987) and Pushkin (1998). Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (2001) was shortlisted for the biennial Marsh Biography Prize. Her biography of Anna Akhmatova, Anna of all the Russias, was published in 2005.

Feinstein's poetry is influenced by The Black Mountain poets, as well as Objectivists and Projectivists, including Charles Reznikoff. Charles Olson sent her his 'famous letter defining breath 'prosody'. Feinstein has travelled extensively, to read her work at festivals across the world, and as Writer in Residence for the British Council, first in Singapore, and then in Tromsø, Norway. She was a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow at Bellagio in 1998. Her poems have been widely anthologised. Her Collected Poems and Translations (2002) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. She has served as a judge for the Gregory Awards, the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, the Costa Poetry Prize and the Rossica Award for Literature translated from Russian, and in 1995 was chairman of the judges for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Books

• Bessie Smith: Lives of Modern Women Series Penguin/Viking
• A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetayeva Hutchinson, 1987
• Lawrence's Women HarperCollins, London, 1993;
• Lawrence and The Women, New York, 1993
• Pushkin Weidenfeld & Nicholson; Ecco, U.S, 1998
• The Russian Jerusalem (Carcanet Press, 1999)
• Ted Hughes - The Life of a Poet Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2001
• Anna of all the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005; Knopf, 2006

Poetry

• In a Green Eye, London, Goliard Press, 1966
• Daylight (Carcanet Press, 1997)
• The Magic Apple Tree, London, Hutchinson, 1971
• At the Edge, Sceptre Press, 1972
• The Celebrants and Other Poems, Hutchinson, 1973
• Some Unease and Angels, Hutchinson; 1977, reprinted, 1981
• Selected Poems, University Center, Michigan, Green River Press,1977
• The Feast of Eurydice, Faber & Faber/ Next Editions, 1980
• Badlands, Hutchinson, 1987
• City Music, Hutchinson, 1990
• Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, 1994)
• 'Daylight (Carcanet Press,1997)
• After Pushkin (edited by Elaine Feinstein) (Folio Society & Carcanet Press,1999)
• Gold (Carcanet Press, 2000)
• Collected Poems and Translations (Carcanet Press, 2002)
• Talking to the Dead (Carcanet Press, 2007)
• Bride of Ice (Carcanet Press, 2009)
• Cities (Carcanet Press, June 2010)

Translated poetry

Listed by year first published (except for Marina Tsvetayeva volume)

• The Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva, Oxford University Press, 1961
  • Second edition, 1971
  • Third edition, Hutchinson, 1987
• Three Russian Poets: Margarita Aliger, Yunna Morits, Bella Akhmadulina, Manchester: Carcanet Press,1976
• Bride Of Ice: New Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva (Carcanet Press, 2009) ( including ' On The Red Horse', 'Girlfriend' ( lyrics for Sofia Parnok), New Year's Greetings) and a new Introduction

Novels

• The Circle London, Hutchinson (Penguin 1973)
• The Amberstone Exit, London, Hutchinson, (Penguin 1974); translated into Hebrew (Keter 1984)
• The Glass Alembic, as The Crystal Garden London, Hutchinson, (Penguin 1978); New York, Dutton, 1974
• Children of the Rose, London, Hutchinson; (Penguin 1976); translated into Hebrew, 1987
• The Ecstasy of Dr Miriam Garner, London, Hutchinson
• The Shadow Master, London, Hutchinson, 1978; New York, Simon & Schuster, 1979
• The Survivors, London, Hutchinson; New York, 1991
• The Border, London, Hutchinson; New York, 1985
• Mother's Girl, London, Hutchinson; shortlisted for 1990 Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize
• All You Need, London, Hutchinson; New York, 1991
• Loving Brecht, London, Hutchinson
• Dreamers, London, Macmillan
• Lady Chatterley's Confession, London, Macmillan
• Dark Inheritance, London, Women's Press
• The Russian Jerusalem, Manchester, Carcanet Press.

Radio plays

• 1980: "Echoes"
• 1981: "A Late Spring"
• 1983: "A Day Off"
• 1985: "Marina Tsvetayeva: A Life"
• 1987: "If I Ever Get On My Feet Again"
• 1990: "The Man in Her Life"
• 1993: "Foreign Girls, a trilogy"
• 1994: "A Winter Meeting"
• "Lawrence's Women in Love" (four-part adaptation)
• 1996: Adaptation of novel, Lady Chatterley's Confession Book at Bedtime

Short story collections

• Matters of Chance, London, Covent Garden Press
• The Silent Areas, London, Hutchinson

Prizes and awards

• 1970: Arts Council Grant/Award for Translation
• 1971: Betty Miller Prize
• 1979: Arts Council Grant/Award for Translation
• 1981: Arts Council Grant/Award for Translation
• 1981: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 1990: Cholmondeley Award
• 1992: Society of Authors Travel Award
• 2004: Arts Council Award

Reviews

• Elaine Feinstein's Cities - Alan Brownjohn, The Sunday Times, 25th July 2010

• "She Means It When She Rhymes: Marina Tsvetaeva: Selected Poems." Review from Thumbscrew. No 17 - Winter 2000/1
• Review of Daylight in Ambit No 150 - 1997

Further reading

• Davie, Donald. Under Briggflatts: A History of Poetry in Britain 1960-1988 (Carcanet Press, 1989)
• Lassner, Phyllis. Anglo-Jewish Women Writing the Holocaust: Displaced Witnesses, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
• Lawson, Peter. Anglo-Jewish poetry from Isaac Rosenberg to Elaine Feinstein, Vallentine Mitchell & Co
• Schmidt, Michael. Lives of the Poets, Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 2007

External links

• Carcanet Press biography of Elaine Feinstein
• Profile at Poetry Archive *Contemporary writers
• Podcast interview with Elaine Feinstein at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival
• "Elaine Feinstein – Talking to the Dead" 7 May 2007. BBC (audio 9 min) "Elaine Feinstein" Tuesday 2 July 2002

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