Ainsley Morse

I am a scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first century literature from the former USSR and its many republics, including Russia and Ukraine, as well as the former Yugoslavia and present day Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. My primary interests lie in experimental literary forms, from early 20th-century avant-gardes to innovative work produced despite state-imposed limitations. My first book, Word Play: Experimental Poetry and Soviet Children's Literature (2021), traces the history of a "childlike aesthetic" from early modernist experimentation through Soviet utopian visions and censorship, and into the strange partnership of children's and underground literature. I am also a literary translator, working from Russian, B/C/S and Ukrainian, and specializing in poetry translation. The co-translated volume Permanent Evolution: Selected Essays on Literature, Theory and Film (by Yuri Tynianov) won the 2021 AATSEEL Best Scholarly Translation award. Recent and forthcoming books include the novels of Konstantin Vaginov (NYRB 2025), F-Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry (isolarii, 2020) and a volume on Ukrainian Soviet modernist theory & poetry. With Anastasia Osipova, I co-edit Cicada Press, a small independent publisher of translated poetry.

Pronouns: any

Languages: Russian, B/C/S/M, Ukrainian

Books

• Maria Galina, Communiqués, ed. and trans. Ainsley Morse and Anna Halberstadt) (Cicada Press, 2024)
• The Fine Feats of the Five Cockerels Gang: A Surrealist-Marxist Children’s Epic by Aleksandar Vučo and Dušan Matić, ed. and trans. Ainsley Morse and Aleksandar Bošković (Brill Avant-garde Critical Series, 2022)
• Word Play: Experimental Poetry and Soviet Children’s Literature (Northwestern UP, 2021)
• The Scar We Know: Poems by Lida Yusupova, ed. Ainsley Morse, multiple translators (Cicada Press, 2021)
• F-Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry, ed. Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky and Galina Rymbu (isolarii, 2020)
• Dmitri Prigov, Soviet Texts, translated by Simon Schuchat, ed. Ainsley Morse (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020)
• Permanent Evolution: The Collected Theoretical Works of Yuri Tynianov, ed. and trans. Ainsley Morse and Philip Redko (Academic Studies Press, 2019)
• Andrey Egunov-Nikolev, Beyond Tula: A Soviet Pastoral, ed. and trans. Andrey Egunov-Nikolev, Beyond Tula: A Soviet Pastoral, ed. and trans. AM (Academic Studies Press, 2019 (Academic Studies Press, 2019)
• Igor Kholin, Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems, trans. Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017)
• Linor Goralik, FOUND LIFE: Poems, Stories, Comics, a Play, and an Interview, ed. Ainsley Morse, Maria Vassileva and Maya Vinokour (Columbia University Press, 2017)
• Andrei Sen-Senkov, Anatomical Theater, trans. Ainsley Morse and Peter Golub, Zephyr Press (2014)
• Vsevolod Nekrasov, I Live I See: The Collected Poetry of Vsevolod Nekrasov, trans. AM and Bela Shayevich (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013)

Translations

• Igor Gulin, “…o…” Poetry Project Newsletter 274 (Fall 2023), co-translated with Timmy Straw
• “Across the river they’re making chocolate” (Grigori Dashevsky, co-translated with Timmy Straw), Hopkins Review vol. 16 (2), 18-19
• Selection of anti-war poems by Maria Stepanova, Ramil Niyazov and Maria Malinovskaya, World Poetry Today (February 2023), vol. 97 (2), 53-54
• Yuri Tynianov, “Illustrations,” translated with Philip Redko, Lingua Franca 8 (2022)
• Selection of poems by Maria Galina, Verses on the Vanguard, ed. Polina Barskova (Deep Vellum, 2021) – part of PEN-sponsored “Writers in Dialog” Translation Project
• “Global Congress of Post-Prostitution,” play/performance piece by Keti Chukhrov, contemporary artist, poet and playwright – translation with the author (staged at Orpheum Graz (Austria), 2019)
• “Interlude” (Yuri Tynianov), Common Knowledge vol. 24/3 (2018), 498-542
• “Excerpt from Kholin’s Kholin 66,” in Boris Dralyuk, ed., “The Silver Age of Russian-English Translation,” Translation Review 97 (2017), 30-35.
• Translations of Vladimir Sterligov in Polina Barskova, ed., Written in the Dark: Five Siege Poets (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016)

• Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 2016
• M.A. in Comparative Slavic Literatures, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2008
• B.A. in Russian Language and Literature, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2005