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<body><h4><h1>&quot;We Are The Future&quot;</h1><h2>International Song Project</h2>

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<img src="pics/russiaflag.jpg" width="100" height="67">

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<tr><td><h3><br><b>The WATF Russia Team</b></h3></td></tr>

<tr><td align="center"><h5><img src="pics/natalia01.jpg" width="150" height="225" title="Natalia Shamberova"><br><br>Natalia Shamberova, WATF Russia Project Leader</h5>

<h4>NATALIA SHAMBEROVA:

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&quot;Our earthly way is nothing more than a preparation to the Life Beyond.  And everything we go through on this way – our trials, sorrow, grief and all events that occur are determined to be the lessons of our spiritual growth.  Whether we accept them or not, they define our way, which continues Beyond… after the days on the Earth, there, in the Next Time, where we’ll have to report on our lives and deeds to the Lord… 
People live in different countries, speak different languages, belong to different confessions, but there is a single Intelligence behind the Universe, called Our Lord.&quot; Once the English poet and priest John Donne (1572 – 1631) wrote the verses very much about the same:
 <b>&quot;… No man is an Island, entirely of itself;
  Every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…
  … Any man’s death diminishes me, because I’m involved in   
  Mankind;
  … And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it 
  tolls for you&quot;</b>.



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Natalia Shamberova is a poet, a member of All-Russia Union of Literary Workers. She first published books of lyrics: <b>'Undiscovered Dream'</b> (1991), <b>'Sacred Trifle'</b> (1993) and <b>'Amethyst Divine Light'</b> (1997). We’re quoting what editorials done by the poet A. Sheveljov in those books have it about her lyrics:

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&quot;Her poems reflect specific emotional states of her soul, emotional impulses called by a very rarely nowadays remembered word ‘inspiration’. Written in all trustful sincerity unpretentious poems discover nonetheless sufficient self-dependence and whole-hearted nature of a heroine through her peculiar lyrical diary.&quot;

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&quot;For Natalia Shamberova writing verses is not a hobby or passion, but the matter of cognition of Life and environment’s essentials through a personal destiny experience. She never flirts with her readers neither she ever tries to utterly surprise them with any intricate or complicated poetic forms or comparisons. But with the very first lines of her verses she appeals to the depth of the readers’ hearts and inmost feelings being to a very high extent sincere and positively sure in what she’s writing about. Love is the temple for her where everything should be pure and decent; the God and the family – is the salvation from all unavoidable trials sent to us by Life&quot;.


<img src="pics/stpetersberg.jpg" title="St Petersberg" align="right" hspace="15" vspace="15" width="225" height="150">

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                                                                          Natalia Shamberova:
        
&quot;… a happy although unexpected and quite unusual experience, which I got when being in Great Britain: my husband and me were introduced to the Altar of Westminster Abbey, London, where the priest of the Abbey took us by the request of Mr. Hugh Patterson, at that time a professor of Wolverhampton  Polytechnic, where my husband had been sent for work for half a year. He invited us to his home and at parting asked me to pass the message to the priest in Westminster Abbey where as he knew we would go on our next day visit to London. We did as he asked.
When the priest said: “Follow me” and went to the Sanctuary I couldn’t first realize what was going to happen, but when I did, I didn’t know how to stop myself, an Orthodox woman who knows well that women are not allowed to enter the Sanctuary… Well, there was no time for thinking though and besides I couldn’t beet the feeling. When we came up to the Altar, the priest asked:   - Do you realize where you are? - Yes, we do.
Then he continued: 
-	This is a most sacred place in the U.K. more than 11 centuries years old. This is the heart of Great Britain. Here every morning during the Liturgy we pray for the Holy Spirit to descend and bless our country and its people. My friend asked me to pray here for you two…
And he prayed for half an hour or maybe more. I can’t describe how I felt. I was in the Heaven. Outside among the first things that came into my mind was the idea to rewrite my sightseeing tour about St. Petersburg that would show the places where the heart of my country’s beating asking the Lord for blessing my country and its people…
  So after having been put in front of Westminster Abbey altar    
  besides separate sonnets I wrote 20 Garlands of sonnets:15 in  
  the Crown of Sonnets and 5 separate Garlands of which one is 
   in English – …The Harbour of Comfort…'. Somehow, I do   associate these   events.&quot;

<img src="pics/stpetersberg01.jpg" align="right" hspace="15" vspace="15">

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In 2000 the book <b>'Heavenly Doors…'</b> was published. It contained among separate Sonnets and 3 Garlands of Sonnets under the names: 'With you…', 'C’est la vie…' and 'The Determination' - the Cycle of Sonnets in Russian 'The Declaration of Love', written with W. Shakespeare’s lines as epigraphs and illustrated by the picture of St. Trinity church in Stratford –on- Avon, where the Great English Bard was buried:
<b>'Will you then write me a sonnet…' (Much Ado About Nothing, Act. 5, Sc.4);
'Who will believe my verse in time to come…' (Sonnet XVII);
'Love is my sin…' (Sonnet CXLII);
'My love shall in my verse ever live young…' (Sonnet XIX)…</b>


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Natalia is the first woman in the Russian literature who has composed the Crown of Sonnets (211 sonnets interlaced into 14 Sonnet Garlands) – an extremely complicated and rare poetic form <b>'THE MISTS OF AUGUST'</b> (The Crown of Sonnets) was written and published In 2003 in which &quot;she leads her readers to the optimistically - sounding hope for a successful outcome of all trials Russia is undergoing, which she sees in the profound spiritual Restoration in Russia&quot;.
Natalia writes both in Russian and in English. 
&quot;The Garland of Sonnets <b>'…THE HARBOUR OF COMFORT'</b> is the first attempt to write the Garland of Sonnets in English after 4 separate Garlands and the Crown of Sonnets (the Garland of 14 Garlands) have been written in Russian. It so happened, that it was written in 2005 – 15 years after visiting Great Britain. 'Farewell Sonnet' was the first published thing in English written to my students in 2001. Then, while I was writing The Crown of Sonnets <b>'THE MISTS OF AUGUST'</b> the first lines of the tale <b>'THE MERMAID… VICE A VERSA'</b> came to me. It’s also included in this edition as well as the first appeal to Andersen <b>'THE UGLY DUCKLING'</b> – first in Russian, then its English version... I would have never before imagined that this pleasure might ever happen to me, though.  Writing in English is quite a challenge. However, English is my professional love – the harbour of comfort in a sense...&quot;

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&quot;I like Natalia Shamberova’s Garland of Sonnets <b>'… THE HARBOUR OF COMFORT…'</b> and think she has given us another delightful experience with these new poems. They are passionate and full of insight and express many questions about our human situations as well as reflections about how God deals with us&quot;. <b>Hugh Patterson, a chaplain, Great Britain, 2006</b>.
&quot;I'm very fond of the traditional Sonnet; it's hard, I think, to beat - in the English language at any rate – Shakespeare's.  It's like, in his own words, &quot;When to the sessions of sweet silent thought, I summon up remembrance of things past ....&quot; (Sonnet XXX). 
<b>'…THE HARBOUR OF COMFORT…'</b> is a fascinating poetic structure comprising a Garland of Sonnets commencing with a Magistral followed by fourteen Sonnets whose first and last lines are successive lines of the Magistral and each of whose first lines is the last line of the preceding Sonnet.  The same structure can be observed in the author’s other work 'The Fogs of August' as fourteen interlaced Garlands in all, making up a Crown. The structure lends itself to mathematical graphical representation of the Crown, which has been accomplished on computer by the author's husband.  The structure facilitates the development of a continuous thread of ideas and emotions through the work, encompassing human relationships set against a backdrop of spirituality and cosmic determination.

<img src="pics/stpetersberg02.jpg" align="right" hspace="15" vspace="15">

Shamberova's works are in Russian, her mother-tongue, and English.  The present work, although written in a second language for her, English, evinces such a choice of wording, syntax, and idiom, that it hardly indicates anything other than that of a native speaker.  As one progresses through the work, it is not entirely alien to be reminded of the expression of 'the sessions of sweet silent thought' provided in the Sonnets of the Great English Bard.  This is praise enough for the content, woven into such an intricate structure, or perhaps even a restructure, a real ‘перестройка’. <b>Dr. Ian J. Cowan, Ireland, 2006</b>.
<b>Natalia Shamberova</b>: &quot;The jubilee bilingual book 'LOVE+' (15 years the 
publication of my first book) successfully have reached my reviewers from the 
U.K. and Ireland after whose wonderful letters I just couldn't sleep; and  they 
provided me with the addresses of a number of recommended Libraries to which I 
should donate the book: National Library of Ireland, National Library of 
Scotland, British Library,U.K.; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., 
The Bodleian Library, Oxford, England; Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, 
England; the Shakespeare Memorial Library, Birmingham, England</b>.  That would be the greatest honour to me if it happens. The book is unique, it contains 20 Garlands of interlaced Sonnets (15 make the Crown of 211 Sonnets; and among 4 separate Garlands the 1 is in English “The Harbour of Comfort” and 2 tales in verses also in English as well as an Introduction review) . It’s also included in this edition 2 tales in verses following H-C Andersen –  first in Russian then its English version ... I would have never before imagined that this pleasure might ever happen to me, though.  Writing in English is quite a challenge. However, English is my professional love – the harbour of comfort in a sense... I feel so much grateful to my sponsors who made it possible (publishing in Russia is extremely expensive); to my reviewers and their kindest words of praise included in the Introduction. So, I’m ‘heels over head’ with joy!&quot;

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Besides being a poet Natalia teaches English at St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance, is a professional guide and interpreter.
Natalia collaborates with 'International Teacher-post' publishing there articles about Russia and its present-day problems in education and Sonnets in the rubric 'A Sonnet from my heart…' To this terrific project she contributes Love, Hope and Faith that We Are the Future. She’s an interpreter of the song in Russian and is trying to promote the project in her country.
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