The very essence of St Petersburg
Remember that writer's phrase, that word, that perfectly sums up a city to you?
Can you imagine what would happen if dozens of these words and phrases became part of a poem that gave you instant essence of the city in question?
This is just what our new citypicktures series has been created (or do we mean curated?) to do.
Heather Reyes, the editor of our city-pick urban travel anthologies, has created a mini-version of each of our books. Scouring our titles for some of the most telling and evocative phrases and images. Then shaping them into poems that try to 'bottle the essence' of each city in a few hundred telling words.
The first 'poem portrait' is of St Petersburg. Join Joseph Brodsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Nabokov, Andrei Bitov, Malcolm Bradbury, Orlando Figes, Viv Groskop, Anna Kovalova, Dmitry Likhachev, Helen Dunmore and many others in this oh-so-atmospheric evocation of Russia's most beautiful city.
It's the next best thing to stepping out into Nevsky Prospect ....
Heather Reyes is the editor of city-pick St Petersburg, £9.99, Oxygen Books, featuring over sixty writers on the city
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