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The war in Ukraine through the lens of women-poets

Lada Kolomiyets, Dr. Philol. Sci., Professor at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and (currently) Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, is an interdisciplinary researcher in linguistics, literature and translation studies, a historian of translation, with several monographs, textbooks for graduate students, literary anthologies, book chapters and multiple articles published in Ukrainian and English in the leading peer-reviewed journals; she is a translator into/from Ukrainian working presently on translations of the wartime women's poetry.

  • Ukrainian Poets

Professor Lada Kolomiyets, translations of Halyna Kruk, Lviv, Ukraine and two other women-poets' work were published online by international poetry journal and platform Versopolis

Versopolis is a European poetry platform that creates. new opportunities for emerging European poets. Poetry Expo 24 / 25 February 2024

The nature of poetry at the time of existential Russia's war on Ukraine appeared to be substantially different from that of a peaceful time. The war has turned Ukrainian poets into the witnesses, diarists, and chroniclers of the war, of the enemy's atrocities, and of Ukrainian people's resilience. After February 24, 2022, Ukrainian poets have broadened a place for aesthetic reflection on poetry and its traditional senses and proved that poetry may not wait for an indefinite number of years until its revival "after Auschwitz." Ukrainian poetry did not cease to exist when the Auschwitz for Ukrainians began, but it transformed and became a testimony.
 
The metaphorics of contemporary Ukrainian poetry has undergone transformation on its way to nearing the genre of testimony. Ukrainian writer and translator Halyna Kruk explains in her speech at the opening of the poetry festival in Berlin in June 2022 that metaphors have lost their power in front of what is actually experienced. The voice of the diarist of wartime experience has been the most important feature of literary expression since February 2022, as well as the evidence that art can create vital energy amidst the genocidal Russian war on Ukraine. The multiplicity of war experiences through the prism of immediately personal voices and life stories told by Ukrainian women-poets is broadly reflected on the Internet. 

Please e-mail Professor Lada Kolomiyets with any questions.