Valentina Platonovna Polukhina (Russian: Валентина Платоновна Полухина; 18 June 1936 – 8 February 2022) was a British-Russian scholar, Emeritus Professor at Keele University, and the widow of Daniel Weissbort. She was the recipient of the A. C. Benson Medal and the Medal of Pushkin.
Valentina Polukhina was born in Siberia and educated at Kemerovo, Tula and Moscow universities. From 1962 to 1973 she taught at Moscow's Lumumba University and from 1973 till 2001 was Professor at Keele University, England.
She was the author and editor of major studies of Joseph Brodsky, as well as publications on poets such as Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Khlebnikov and Mandelshtam. She had a particular interest in bringing living Russian literature to English audiences, organising the visits of many Russian writers and poets to Keele and other English universities. The post of Russian Poet in Residence at the University of Keele, as well as the Russian Poets Fund, were established thanks to her efforts.[citation needed]
In 1995, Polukhina – together with colleagues of the Russian Department at Keele University – established The Russian Poets Fund in order to invite Russian poets to British universities. The patrons of the fund were Prince Michael of Kent, the Bishop of Lichfield Keith Sutton, and Seamus Heaney. After Polukhina's retirement in 2001, she and her husband Daniel Weissbort ran the fund. They compiled and edited The Anthology of Russian Women Poets (2002) and invited several Russian women poets to present it at The Poetry International in London in 2002. Due to Weissbort's illness, the fund was closed in 2012 before being re-established in December 2014 with the help of poet Olga Shvarova. Rowan Williams and Andrew Motion replaced the deceased Heaney and Sutton.[citation needed]
Polukhina completed The Anthology of Poems Dedicated to Joseph Brodsky, under the title Iz nezabyvshikh menia ("By those who remember me") which include sixteen British and two Irish poets.[citation needed]
In 2014, she was awarded the A. C. Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature[1] and in 2018 was awarded the Medal of Pushkin for the service to Russian and British culture and for the study and preservation of cultural heritage.[citation needed]
Polukhina died on 8 February 2022, at the age of 85.[2]