“IT’S USELESS TO READ MY POEMS... THEY NEED TO BE WRITTEN”: ON THE AUDIENCE FOR CHILDREN’S POETRY BY GERMAN LUKOMNIKOV

Abstract

The article studies the combinatorial poetry of German Lukomnikov, a representative of modern literary avant-garde. His book of poetry, It’s Good I’m the way I’m (Samokat publishing house, 2019) can be described as a book of double addressing. Paradoxical mini-poems seem simple at first (typically written as couplets); the author positions them as poetry of primitivism, but they address complicated existential problems: the shortness and difficulty of life; the dialectics of talent and creative incompetence; and patterns of thought. It seems doubtful that a child, as a reader, can understand such problems. However, the author is against the age division of his audience. He considers his game poetic style to be universal for people of different ages. The authors of the article raise question: what is the uniting base for Lukomnikov’s reception? The poet makes the border between the writing mind and the perceiving mind penetrable: he avoids plot and narration, often uses I-statements or direct speech which the reader can adopt. He tries to make the reader also a writer, a co-author. According to Lukomnikov, the language, as a creative environment in which we live from childhood and which we feel unconsciously, allows us to understand any game text. Thus, the poet offers his readers to move from the form to the sense, reinterpreting (in other words: recreating), and removes the opposition of addressing children and adults.

Keywords: German Lukomnikov, double addressing, poetry for children, reader, combinatorial poetry, avant-garde, mini-poems