Multimedia poetry from Orbita 4

Orbita formed in 1999 when Latvian poets Artur Punte, Sergey Timofejev, Semyon Khanin, Zhorzh Uallik, and Vladimir Svetlov, who write in Russian, got together to establish a "text-group." The mulitimedia project entitled Orbita (The Orbit) birthed from these roots starting out with readings in clubs, city squares, and even a small ship, from locations spanning Riga, Moscow, Minsk, Stockhom, Prague, Leipzig, and New York. In 2000 the group produed a CD titled O2 and in 2001 they held a poetic video festival, Word in Motion. Orbita 4 was released as a poetry CD+DVD in 2004. The audio CD is a collaboration with a variety of musicians from Riga, Moscow and St. Petersburg. The DVD is compiled works of Latvian artists from two video festivals and new videopoems from Orbita and partners. Orbita's website is www.orbita.lv.

Photo by Kevin Platt

Semyon Khanin was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1970. He is the author of two collections of poetry in Russian, Tol'ko chto (2003; Just now) and Opushchennye podrobnosti(2008; Missed details). His poetry has been translated into Latvian, English, Czech, German, Italian, Swedish, Estonian, and Ukranian. He is a participant in the literary project Orbita and editor of the almanac by the same name.

Sergej Timofejev is a member of Orbita, a creative collective of Russian poets and artists, as well as a Riga-based journalist, translator, and DJ. Since the late 1980s, he has published in the journals Rodnik, Mitin zhurnal, Vavilon, Znamia, and others. A pioneer of video poetry in Russian, his first video poem, "Orchestra Rehearsal" (1995), may be seen on YouTube. Timofejev is the author of six books of poetry, three of which were published in Latvia and three in Russia. He was short-listed for the Andrei Belyi prize in 2002. His poetry has been translated into several languages.