The Electrification of the Soviet Union

Craig Raine

One day, don't know when, I am going to learn to love poetry. prolonged exposure to the Rev's reviews and a father who loves poetry will work some magic on me. Until that happens I usually avoid the stuff.

The Electrification of the Soviet Union isn't strictly speaking a poem. It's the libretto for a small scale opera. Poet Craig Raine, he of the "Martian school", wrote it for Glyndebourne in 1987 and since then it's been revived from time to time.

There's some unrequited love, some awakening class consciousness. Lines like:

"I'll spell it out. We confiscate
the goods of traitors to the state.
The Frestlns were class enemies."

The rest of it rather passed me by in a blur of verse.

When the Congress of Soviets, in the early days of the USSR, erected an enormous illuminated map with lightbulbs dotted across it to represent their plan for extending electrification across the country, the stunt caused blackouts across the rest of Moscow. This fact has nothing to do with Craig Raine's poetry but its irony value is priceless and I couldn't bear not to mention it.