The armed conflict in the east of Ukraine brought about an emergence of a distinctive trend in contemporary Ukrainian poetry: the poetry of war. Directly and indirectly, the poems collected in this volume engage with the events and experiences of war, reflecting on the themes of alienation, loss, dislocation, and disability; as well as justice, heroism, courage, resilience, generosity, and forgiveness. In addressing these themes, the poems also raise questions about art, politics, citizenship, and moral responsibility. The anthology brings together some of the most compelling poetic voices from different regions of Ukraine. Young and old, female and male, somber and ironic, tragic and playful, filled with extraordinary terror and ordinary human delights, the voices recreate the human sounds of war in its tragic complexity.
The poems collected in this volume engage with the events and experiences of war, reflecting on the themes of alienation, loss, dislocation, and disability; as well as justice, heroism, courage, resilience, generosity, and forgiveness. The anthology brings together some of the most compelling poetic voices from different regions of Ukraine.
"The poets here do what poets do best: in responding to a
traumatic upheaval, they create a language for events that defy words. Their
work is creative in the original sense of the word. The variety of the voices
in this volume is its greatest strength. It refects the fact that war affects
everybody, and that Ukraine is and remains a bilingual country. ? The
translation into English by a stellar line-up of translators, several of whom
were born in Ukraine, makes these poems available to a world-wide readership on
linguistically neutral territory. The anthology is beautifully and
professionally executed." -Josephine von Zitzewitz, University of Cambridge, Slavic and East European Journal Vol. 62,
No. 4
