Mukha Renata Grigoryevna, poetess: biography, creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Mukha Renata Grigoryevna is a special name in Russian literature for children. The poetess subtly felt her native language and masterfully mastered it. The writer called herself a translator of animal languages, as well as vegetables, fruits, rains and galoshes. "Translations" by Renata Grigoryevna are full of optimism. Her poems appeal to both adults and young readers. The writer herself did not consider her work strictly childish.

Childhood and youth of the poetess

On the last day of January 1933, Renata Mukha was born into the family of a military man and a teacher. The biography of the writer is still not fully known, and information about her life is just beginning to be collected by fans and friends. The poet's parents then lived in Odessa. Mother - Shekhtman Alexandra Solomonovna, was born there in 1913. She graduated from Kharkov University (at that time it had a different name, and in the 60s it moved to a different status). Afterwar, she headed one of the departments there. The poet's father - Grigory Gerasimovich Mukha, a Ukrainian, was born in the village of Bolshie Sorochintsy, Poltava province. He was a military man and served in Odessa. Has military awards for participation in the Second World War.

Renata Grigorievna spent her early childhood in a multilingual environment. In the courtyard where her family lived, one could meet Jews, Germans, Greeks, Russians, and Ukrainians. Perhaps this contributed to the development of the great interest of the poetess in foreign languages.

When Renata was 5 years old, her parents divorced. The girl stayed with her mother.

During the war, the family moved to Tashkent. And the father goes to the front. There is a touching memory in the retelling of the writer Marina Boroditskaya about how little Renata managed to take 2 books with her when moving: “Taras Bulba” and “The Adventures of Karik and Valya”, which she learned by heart, lying under the bed during the years of evacuation. They were her treasure and salvation in her time of need.

In 1944, Mukha Renata Grigoryevna returned to Kharkov, where she graduated from the 116th women's gymnasium. The question of entering the institute began to be decided.

By that time, the writer was already fluent in German, knew Yiddish and a little French (she studied it at school). Young Renata chose Kharkiv University (English Department, Faculty of Foreign Languages) for admission, which she successfully graduated from, remaining there to work as an assistant professor at the Department of English Philology. In the 50s, under the pseudonym Natasha, she even hosted a program on Kharkov television to studyEnglish.

Method of learning the language - "Fabulous English"

After graduating from the university, Mukha Renata Grigoryevna defended her doctoral degree and wrote about 40 scientific papers. She came up with an original method of learning English - "Fabulous English". Its essence lies in learning through fairy tales, magical and entertaining stories - everything that gives the student joy and arouses his interest. The criteria for selecting stories for lessons are:

• natural, catchy and rhythmic language;
• 70-75% of the words known to the student, so as not to be distracted from the narrative, explaining new expressions;
• presence of many repetitions;
• the presence of dialogues with short remarks;
• dynamic (preference for action over description);
• the presence of a poem or song to which you can do physical exercises;
• not too long story text that can be completed in one lesson;
• not too archaic texts (better to use modern texts with pictures).

In this technique, it is very important not to read the story, but to speak it out with the involvement of students in the dialogue process.

Since 1990 Renata Grigoryevna Mukha has been talking a lot about her methodology in England, Germany, and the USA. Moreover, the Russian language was fabulous in these cases.

First verses

Mukha Renata Georgievna did not write poetry either in her childhood or in her youth. The first poem that became famous is the story of the unfortunate snake that was bitten bywasp.

This little masterpiece was heard in the 60s by Vadim Levin, then already a well-known children's poet. He learned that the author of the text was a professor in the department of English philology. Subsequently, these people formed an amazing tandem. They have released joint collections of poems more than once, admitting that they are very comfortable working together.

Outlet of a collection of poems

The co-author of the first collection of poems by Renata Grigoryevna is Nina Voronel. He saw the light in 1968 in the publishing house "Kid" and was called "Trouble". The illustrations for it were made by Viktor Chizhikov (father of the famous Olympic bear). Unfortunately, there is no content in the book with an exact indication of authorship, so it is impossible to determine exactly who wrote what. The collection contains 8 poems, among them: “A wasp stung”, “About a white horse and about a black horse”, “Alarm”.

Some works in the collection are found in later editions in a modified form. For example, a story about a horse and galoshes. It is not known who started this story: Vadim Levin or his co-author Renata Mukha. The poems are recognizable, they even made a wonderful cartoon "A horse bought 4 galoshes".

Co-authored poetry collections

After the first collection of works for almost 25 years, there has not been a single author's edition of the poetess named Renata Mukha. Poems are sometimes published in periodicals: Literaturnaya Gazeta, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Ogonyok, and even in the Chicago newspaper Ku-Ku.

Finally in 1993 at the publishing house "Two Elephants"the collection "About a stupid horse …" was released. There are 3 co-authors on the cover: Polly Cameron and the permanent duet of Levin and Mucha.

In 1994, the publishing house "Enlightenment" published a collection of poems "Eccentrics". It includes poems by Russian poets, as well as translations of foreign ones, including works by Renata Mucha. The compilation was compiled by Vadim Levin.

Moving to Israel

In the mid-90s, the writer moved to Israel. She lives in the city of Beersheba and continues to teach English to Israelis at the University. Ben Gurion. Interestingly, when applying for a job, she was forbidden to tell students that she was connected with Russia.

Renata Grigorievna is a member of the Union of Russian-speaking authors of Israel.

She is valued as a teacher and scientist.

In Israel, the writer met Mark Galesnik, who helps her publish her first author's collections.

Lifetime editions of Renata Mucha's poems

• 1998 - "Hippopoem". The preface to the collection was written by Eduard Uspensky, who himself writes superb poems about children. Afterword - Igor Guberman.
• 2001 - collection "There are miracles in life".
• 2002 - "Inconsistencies".
• 2004 - the first collection published in Russia - "A little about the octopus". This book is recommended by the Russian Library Association for reading to children.
• 2005 - "Once, maybe twice".
• 2006 - "I don't sleep here" with drawings by Tatyana Plotnikova.
• 2008 - "Wiki-Waki-Wokie" - a collection of songs by Vladimir Zhivov on poems about children.
• 2009 -"Between Us" is the last collection published during the lifetime of the poetess.

Renata Mucha's readers today

Renata Grigoryevna died in 2009. Her books are published again and again, continuing to delight adults and children in different parts of the world. Among the recommendations for reading from young mothers, the name always sounds enthusiastically - Renata Mukha. "Lullaby" and her other poems were set to music by Sergei Nikitin.

I would like to finish with the words of Yevgeny Yevtushenko: “The small but great poet Renata Mukha deserves to have her poems not only included in school anthologies, but also accompany all of us through life, even graying, but not aging in soul, because such verses won't let us.”