“No unnecessary things will come into your head”. How the presentation of Boris Grebenshchikov’s poetry collection was held in London

“There is nothing scarier than a poet reading his own poems… So, the sooner you have questions, the better for you… I never thought that this would ever be published – these poems appeared solely out of the pleasure of writing them and reading them to the closest friends who are not afraid of anything” – Boris Grebenshchikov began the meeting with his usual self-irony, and then as an introduction read out for the audience several poems from his new collection.

Demyan Kudryavtsev, a poet, prose writer and media manager who moderated the meeting, noted that in the many years of his acquaintance with BG, it was the first time he had heard and seen the musician recite poetry without a guitar. On the eve of the creative evening, Kudryavtsev collected several questions for Grebenshchikov from his “correspondents” – people from different countries and cities who would like to know the legendary performer’s opinion on a variety of topics.

The author of one such question noted that for a long time the only fundamental emotion in society, which should create the right context and background for songs and life in general, was considered to be love, but what other feelings it is not shameful for a person to experience remains a mystery. “We are used to seeing the world conditioned – by upbringing, habits, traditions. In fact, the real world has not the slightest relation to it, we see schemes all the time and, looking at them, we do not notice the real world…. For me writing songs, drawing pictures is just that state when you can do anything, when you are in the real world – and the words and feelings that should come,” commented BG.

Demyan Kudryavtsev and Boris Grebenshchikov talked about the rightness of choice, good and evil, light and darkness, guilt and whether it was possible to change the current state of the world through music, words or actions, and much more.

To the classic question about how a song differs from a verse put to music, Grebenshchikov answered: “For me, writing poems and songs are two such different, completely different processes that I could never even compare them…A poem is written because a few words suddenly appear, so I wonder what will happen next. A song comes about, I guess, when two or 3 words ‘know’ they’re going to lay down to music, and the music already dictates.”

After the discussion the audience was able to talk to the musician and ask him their own questions – the audience had a lot of them, as well as to be the first to get their autographed copy of “The Book of Words”. The full recording of the presentation can be found on the youtube channel of Zima: