The mission of the Joseph Brodsky Fellowship Fund is to provide Russian artists and writers with an opportunity to create in a stimulating and unconstrained cultural environment.
Before his death in 1996 Nobel-Prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky was working to establish a Russian Academy in Rome. Continuing his vision, the Fund awards annual fellowships, selected by an independent jury, for unstructured, uninterrupted and substantial periods of work and study.
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I know all too well that in order to write properly I need two conditions: one is being left to my own devices, another is having surroundings to explore. I suppose there is no need to emphasize that as far as exploring goes, Rome and Venice are both majestic and inexplicable—especially for someone who, like myself, comes for the first time in their lives. This fellowship amazed me every day with the same simple thing: I was here just—well—to be. This sense of “just being” is, I guess, what helped me to finish a few songs I was working on for a year and to finally climb over a decisive point in the process of writing a novel.
I did not go to Rome to make new works, I went to Rome to become a new person.