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Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was a Russian poet who enthusiastically supported the Bolshevik revolution. Increasingly disillusioned, he committed suicide in 1930.

The cover is taken from El Lissitsky's designs for Mayakovsky's For the Voice (1923). (A facsimile edition, plus English translations by Peter France and a collection of essays on all aspects of the book, was published by the British Library in 2000.)

"The translations which follow are in Scots. There is in Scottish poetry (e.g. in Dunbar, Burns and MacDiarmid) a vein of fantastic satire that seems to accommodate Mayakovsky more readily than anything in English verse, and there was also, I must admit, an element of challenge in finding out whether the Scots language could match the mixture of racy colloquialism and verbal inventiveness in Mayakovsky's Russian."

Edwin Morgan, 'Introduction'

This was the first book Morgan published with Carcanet Press, which has remained his publisher ever since.

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Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was a Russian poet who enthusiastically supported the Bolshevik revolution. Increasingly disillusioned, he committed suicide in 1930.

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