Paata Shamugia was born in 1983 in Gali in the region of Abkhazia. He lives as an internal refugee in Georgia ever since the Russian occupation of the region in the early 1990's. He made his debut in 2006 and immediately became infamous as his poems caused uproar among the conservative and religious communities. His continued career has been crowned by several awards and nominations, and he was the first poet to win the prestigious Georgian SABA Literary Award twice for best poetry collection. Schizo-National Anthems introduces Shamugia's poetical ingenuity to English readers, offering selected poems from five of his seven collections: Contra Epos (2006), Advantage (2010), Acathyst Hymns (2011), The Schizoid Society (2014), and Mother Tongue (2017). The selection covers a decade of poetry amusingly exposing the farcical double standards of a young post-Soviet nation marked by the widespread hands of the reactionary church and self-absorbed government officials. Translations were made by Manana Matiashvili and Kristian Carlsson. Two poems translated by Charles Bernstein and the poet were previously published in the literary magazine Jacket2.
