"Sokreb" is a poetry collection that confronts the impossibility of writing in times of catastrophe and the search for a language to speak about the terrible, the painful, and the shameful. A scholar of the literature and anthropology of Leningrad during the siege, Polina Barskova immerses the reader in a dialogue between the present and the past—not in search of models or reference points, but in an attempt to understand and articulate the experience of loss, grief, and shame—a deeply personal yet recognizable and familiar experience. For her, poetry becomes a task undertaken without expecting joy or catharsis, but one that remains a form of presence and contact with reality—"a consolation without consolation."1