Birds, Beasts and a World Made New

Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov never met, but they have much in common. Both inventive luminaries of Modernism, they played a central role in the avant-garde movements of their time and worked closely with the most important visual artists around them. Written with exhilarating freedom and creativity, their verse has continued to inspire poets to the present day. Acclaimed translator and poet Robert Chandler offers a unique selection from both poets' work in vivid new translations. Showcasing their most direct, heartfelt verse alongside their form-breaking innovations, this volume reveals the deep insight with which these two poets wrote about love, friendship, art, revolution, famine and war.



Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922) was a Russian poet and playwright who played an important role in the Russian Futurist movement. Over his short career, he experimented freely with form and language, even inventing his own language, and is now recognized as one of the major Russian poets of his era.Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French poet, novelist and critic of Polish descent. He became a leading figure of the Modernist avant-garde, influencing the development of Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism, and his work is celebrated for its formal innovation.