Near Space. Poetic Project - 11 March 2025, 02:11

16 modern poets wrote poems dedicated to the first human flight into space. In support of the project, a special extended tour was held at the Moscow Museum of Cosmonautics, which lasted several hours. The poems reflected the most interesting details about the preparation for flight, training on the ground and in the air, about unfamiliar and incomprehensible to us everyday difficulties. How to wash your hair and take a shower? None of us really thought about it. How to wear a suit that weighs dozens of pounds? How to sleep if you can not lie down and what to do with your hands, if in a dream they do not want to keep a comfortable position? Have any of us thought about this before? How to withstand overload and control the pulse, how to keep a cold and sober mind in emergency situations, even heartbeat. Who was part of the First Cosmonaut Detachment, why did Yuri Gagarin become the first? And how did they choose the first animals to be sent into space - Squirrel and Arrow, why exactly them, how many more applicants were there? Cosmonaut Alexander Laveikin, who in 1987 spent 174 days in space 3 hours 25 minutes and 56 seconds and three times went into space, where he spent a total of 8 hours 48 minutes, told a lot about his flight with Yuri Romanenko, shared rare recordings of songs that his partner and the commander of the ship wrote in space. It is curious that neither before nor after that Romanenko wrote neither poems nor songs. Such a great poetic experiment, 60 years later, when almost nothing is impossible, but this first flight evokes the strongest emotions and feelings and all this in new lines of modern poets. For each poem, music is written and this is another immersion in space, a kind of response, somewhere even an anthem to flight, sometimes an homage to the poems and songs of Yuri Romanenko. Composer and sound designer - . *** Lines of poems: // "Earth!" What a beauty! – Gagarin said in Russian, so that from now on the country rhymes native “everything is possible” with the name “Yuri”. And before you land, answer the savage’s question: Can your powerful human telescopes catch a black umbrella on October Street? // It's more than life, more than flying. And by the word "man" is given the prefix over, and on Earth he will go only forward - Well, always look up. // Leaving the keys at home would be good? The astronaut in the temples knocking debt debt. // And in the first step, the pain burned itself, then shot the sadness in tears when I return. Let's go! A new era, hello! We're out of our comfort zone. For the first time, humans are outside the Earth’s atmosphere. April 12th is your birthday without candles and cake.