Nika Turbina began composing poetry before she could write. When she was three she would tell poems to her grandmother who would write them down for her. I began composing verse out loud when I was three… I banged my fists on the piano and composed.
In fact her poems were composed so early that one of them is about learning to count, and her fear of the zero's that was making it difficult to learn to count above nine.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko pointed out one great value in her verse. Nika's poetic diary, thanks to its vulnerable sincerity, becomes the diary of other children, those who do not write poetry.
At eight years old she was discovered
and was soon giving readings of her poetry around the world, including a private reading for the Pope. But it is not the fame and fortune, nor the tragic turn that her life soon took, but the poems themselves that I want to share on this site.