Lost and Recovered Light

When I first encountered deafblind people, I realized that for many of us they are invisible. What does not happen to us does not exist. Then I launched simultaneously several projects, which eventually resulted in this book.

I wanted to understand how and what they write about (as it turned out, they write about a variety of themes). I wanted to draw attention to the “invisible ones” who live right next to us; to destroy the conventional boundary between “us” and “them”. That’s why I addressed existential situations, asking these “invisible” people to tell me (a) what they last saw in life, (b) what they last heard in life, and (c) what deafblindness gave them in place of the loss of hearing and sight.

I followed different paths to the final texts, written in the genre of docupoetry. The answers were varied. My task was to turn the disparate material into a poetic text. I did not invent the plot — there was no fiction in these texts. I acted as a director, a co-author, creating poetic works. And I realized that deafblindness is something that can happen to anyone. And our task is to at least be more attentive to those around us. Not to pass by. But to try to feel the other.

Vladimir Korkunov

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Vladimir Korkunov is a poet, critic, and journalist. Born in 1984 in Kimry (Tver region), he is a graduate of Moscow State University of Science and the A.M. Gorky Institute of Literature. He is the co-editor of Context magazine. His poetry has been translated into English, Polish, and Romanian.