Born Isabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina, she was a famous Russian poet of the “Sixtiers,” an essayist, and a translator. Her poetry organically combined modernist techniques with the classical tradition. A writer and public figure, she was the author of poetry collections, song lyrics, and memoirs. She was the wife of the well-known theater designer and stage artist Boris Messerer.

Her father, Akhat Valeevich Akhmadulin, was a Komsomol and party official, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, and a Guards major; later he became deputy chairman of the State Customs Committee of the USSR. Her mother, Nadezhda Makarovna Lazareva, a Russian woman of Italian origin, worked as a translator for the KGB of the USSR; on her mother’s side, she was a niece of the revolutionary Alexander Stopani.

Bella began writing poetry while still at school; her poetic gift was first noted by Pavel Antokolsky. In 1957 she came under criticism in Komsomolskaya Pravda. She graduated from the Literary Institute in 1960. She was expelled from the institute for refusing to support the persecution of Boris Pasternak, but was later reinstated.

In 1964 she appeared as a journalist in Vasily Shukshin’s film There Is Such a Lad. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. In 1970 Akhmadulina appeared on screen in the film Sport, Sport, Sport.

Her first poetry collection, The String, was published in 1962. It was followed by the poetry collections Chills (1968), Music Lessons (1970), Poems (1975), Blizzard (1977), Candle (1977), Mystery (1983), and Garden (USSR State Prize, 1989). Akhmadulina’s poetry is marked by intense lyricism, refined form, and an evident echo of the poetic tradition of the past.

In the 1970s the poet visited Georgia, and since then that land occupied a prominent place in her work. Akhmadulina translated N. Baratashvili, G. Tabidze, I. Abashidze, and other Georgian authors.

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