Sabina Brillo – У конца края (At the End of the Edge)
Illustration: Anna Bałaš
hochroth Minsk
Berlin, 2024
ISBN 978-3-949850-42-4
Language: Russian
The book of poems by Sabina Brillo “У конца края” (“At the End of the Edge”) is a small collection of short texts written from 2019 to 2023. This is her fourth publication, joining the series created in previous years, continuing and developing the main themes. But this one is harsher in tone and more hopeless.
What remains for us? «собирать камни / и ждать смерти», «смерти ждать / и собирать камни – / болтая» (“to collect stones / and wait for death” or “to wait for death / and collect stones – / chattering”)? But despite this dismissive “chattering,” the poet produces the kind of speech appropriate for this situation, when the words mean so little, when “one wants to speak less and less.” This is a feature of Sabina’s style – reflecting the complexity of modern life with minimal means. Such “creative self-restraint” of the author certainly relates to the genesis of poetic minimalism.
We are trying to survive, and art is part of what keeps us afloat when “man cannot save man from man.” But there is always a place for a miracle, however strange it may sound. But this miracle can only be created by man himself. The bilingualism of the book (Russian and Belarusian) is also part of the miracle. A few poems in Belarusian are like a ray of hope. Of course, art is always part of the cultural resistance to tyranny, an affirmation of the human right to freedom. Thus, the book “At the End of the Edge”, with all its restraint and minimalism, works to the full extent.
Sabina Brillo (born in 1974) is a journalist and poet. She is the author of three poetry books: “Это буквы” (“These are letters”, Minsk, 2016), “Я и другие люди” (“Me and other people”, Minsk, 2019), “Tiras Biblio” (Vilnius, 2019, translated into Lithuanian by G. Grajauskas). Brillo writes poems, articles, essays and short prose in Russian and Belarusian. For this book, the author selected some short poetic texts written between 2019 and 2023.