In this first ever collection of Sakha poems in our English language, the highly talented poet Natalia Kharlampieva weaves openly neo-Impressionistic threads of common heritage, communal faith and shared ethnicity, into an overall tapestry of cultural optimism. Indeed, to Kharlampieva's mind, the unique significance played by independent women (willing to endure every hardship) in these restorative endeavours clearly signals the spiritual strength of Central Asia. A lesson, moreover, she obliquely suggests the West itself still needs to learn. Of course, in Kharlampieva's case, these powerful declamations are set against the grinding impact of icy expanses on Sakha psyches. And as such, Kharlampieva invites the readers of Foremother Asia into a hardy, but delicate world: a narratorial sphere characterised by the need to survive against all odds. Indeed, once her reader's grasp that the capital city of the Sakha Republic is located a mere 450 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, they will begin to accept the insights of this crisp and original volume as a singular contribution to Global Text. Unanimously applauded as an impassioned book revealing the delights of a recovered national identity, Kharlampieva also captures Natures savage beauty, as well as the harsh existential truths of life in the far North.

QUOTES:

While in Yakutia, a local legend mesmerized me: afiery Viking warrior sailed up the Lena river to the land of permafrost and melted the heart of an indigenous woman. Their child was the first Yakut; her voice echoes through the ages in Foremother Asia, leaving no one untouched.
Sölvi Fannar Viðarsson, actor, poet,
author of A Poet Trapped in a Caveman's Body
and Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Iceland

"Whether she writes about love, about friendship, about the fate of her people, or of the entirety of Russia, her words (as if in her hands), hold life. She saves it from a lack of spirituality, hatred, disintegration and chaos, as well as self-destruction ... Happy and rich is the ethnic group that has such people."

Sergei Glovyuk, member of the Union of Writers of Russia,
Honorable Member of the Union of Writers of Macedonia,
Serbia, and Montenegro

Poems by Natalia Kharlampieva are like a fine rain falling onto the ground, whereon it becomes water giving life to germinating seeds of kindness, forgiveness, understanding and love ..... "in any country, in any century ..."
Lenifer Mambetova,
Poet and winner of the best female work OEBF-2014
Republic of Crimea