Iliazd: Zaum for Strangers

The fourth volume of the bie bao series presents Ilya Zdanevich’s talk The New Schools in Russian Poetry, given in 1921 in Paris.

Alongside this, the fourth volume also presents Sergei Sigov’s essay “Ilya Zdanevich’s Onolatric Mystery” from 1991, where one can read about donkey-themed ethnographic inflections of Zdanevich’s zaum plays.

The first-ever English translation of these writings is presented with an extended introduction and extensive annotations, as well as with visual contributions by Rea Nikonova, who was a lifelong collaborator of Sigov, and who theoretically elaborated the concept of transposition, an idea to socially expand poetic gestures.

Parallel to Nikonova’s contributions, this global itinerary is further expanded with two visual responses sent by a Bananafish member Qing Zhou, a publisher and an artist from Shanghai. -Publisher