CALL FOR PAPERS

[Dr. Casimir Norkeliunas]

To Catherine Spitzer. Department of Modern Languages and Literature
Saint Anselm College

From: Dr. Kazys Norkeliunas.  Associate Professer of Russian
      Marist College

This is the abstract to my paper which I am submitting for the NEMLA '97
conference.

Title:  Irina Ratshinskaya's Siberian Poetry: A Biographical
        Interpertation

My research deals with Irina Ratuchinskaya's Siberian exile poetry.
 Irina was born and educated in the post Stalin era, yet she received
the one of the harshest punishments for a woman.  This paper treats her
exile in Siberia.  In 1983 she was sentenced to 7 years of hard labor
to be followed by 5 years of internal exile.  While serving her sentence
she wrote powerful, profound poetry about the human condition, as it
related torture and alienation of human beings in the Gulag.  The paper
focuses and analyyzes these Siberian verses only.  There is a strong
emphasis on the thematic aspect of the poetry and less so on formal
poetic analysis.  This paper also deals with how the themes of the
poetry reflected her own life in the camps.


Thank you for consideration of this paper.

Dr. Kazys Norkeliunas