Poets Recommended For Lenin Prize

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30938, 20 December 1965, Page 9

Poets Recommended For Lenin Prize

<N.Z.P.A.-R«ut«r—Copyright) MOSCOW, Dec. 19. The Russian poets, Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky, who have often been criticised by cultural officials, have been recommended for Russia’s highest literary award, the Lenin Prize. Voznesensky was recommended for the prize for a collection of poems entitled “Anti-Worids.” If either poet wins when the result is announced on Lenin’s birthday next April, he will be one of the youngest to have received the honour. The nomination of Yevtushenko appears to confirm reports that the anti-Stalinist poet Is firmly back in favour. Some of his poems, inspired by an Italian tour this year, have been published recently in a newspaper. Yevtushenko and Voznesen-

sky were criticised by Mr Khrushchev during his 1962 suppression of artists and writers. Yevtushenko is reported to be serving with the Russian Army to gather material for new works. He is believed to be with a unit in the Caucasus.

He is still as critical as ever of attempts to impose rigid controls on writers. In a recent unpublished poem he attacked rose-cheeked Communist youth officials who wanted to Imead our souls like wax.”