Talking With Poets: Alina Pleskova at The Linda

Thom Francis welcomes poet Alina Pleskova who shared her work at a special reading sponsored by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Hobo Camp Review at The Linda on August 5, 2023.

Alina Pleskova is a poet, editor, and Moscow-born immigrant turned proud Philadelphian. Her first full-length collection, Toska, is now available from Deep Vellum. She co-edits bedfellows magazine and is a 2020 and 2022 Leeway Foundation grant awardee, as well as the author of the chapbook, What Urge Will Save Us (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2017.) Her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, swamp pink, Peach Mag, the tiny, and elsewhere.

On August 5, 2023, Alina was one of the poets who, along with Rebecca Schumejda, Kenning JP Garcia, Erren Geraud Kelly, and Victorio Reyes Asili, shared their work at The Linda, WAMC’s Performing Arts Studio, as part of a night of poetry and spoken word presented by the Hudson Valley Writers Guild and online literary journals Hobo Camp Review, and Trailer Park Quarterly.

That night, Alina read from her recent collection of poetry, Toska. According to Deep Vellum, her publisher’s website, the title of the book derives from “the Russian word which denotes a melancholic longing without a singular cause, longing for a better world than the late-stage capitalist hell we live in,”.

Local poet Dan Wilcox wrote on his blog about the reading, “She is clearly the center of her poems, but in the sense of a person surrounded by images in the world, as opposed to some self-absorbed philosophical ponderings; an example would be her poem “I Forgot What I Returned For” about being in an airport on her birthday. I particularly liked this line from one of her poems “I want the class war to start but everyone is too tired;””