Lyuba Yakimchuk poetry readings (Translation in Focus)
“there’s no poetry about war
just decomposition”
Lyuba Yakimchuk, Decomposition (Apricots of Donbas, 2015) .
Translated from the Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky.
The Russian aggression has started not 14 days ago. Not even 8 years ago. There is an old and long history to it.
2008: Tbilisi (Georgia)
2014: Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk (Ukraine)
2022: Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol… (all of Ukraine)
Tomorrow: … ???
Lyuba Yakimchuk. Poet. Ukraine.
Her father’s home remains in occupied Donbas.
Her second home — is in Kyiv. The war has come there also.
Lyuba Yakimchuk. Poetry Readings in St Andrews
Time and Venue:
March 10, Thursday, 18:00 (GMT) / 20:00 (Kyiv)
The Lecture Theatre, School 3, St Salvador’s Quad, North Street, St Andrews
(how to get there — google maps link)
The event is free, with an online stream — the link will be posted in a Facebook event.
Lyuba Yakimchuk is a poet, screenwriter, and playwright, born in Pervomaisk, and currently living in Kyiv, Ukraine.
She is the author of several full-length poetry collections, including Apricots of Donbas (2015), which is about people surviving a war. She has also authored two film scripts and two plays. Her play The Wall was produced at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theatre, the largest and the oldest Ukrainian theatre. Her poems and prose have been translated into roughly twenty languages and were published in anthologies and journals in Ukraine, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Israel, and others. Lyuba has participated in various European festivals. In 2016, she had a poetry tour across the USA and Canada.
Yakimchuk has received a number of awards, including the International Slavic Poetic Award, the Bohdan-Ihor Antonych Prize, and the Smoloskyp Prize, three of Ukraine’s most prestigious awards for young poets. Apricots of Donbas received the Kovaliv Foundation Literary Prize (NYC, USA). The publication was also included in the rating of 10 Best Ukrainian Books About the Anti-terrorist Operation according to the Ukrainian Forbes and was translated into Polish and Estonian.
All ticket proceeds will go to the Ukrainian aid and relief effort.
This event takes place within the framework of the Ukraine—Scotland: Collaborative Literary Project that is supported by the European Union within the House of Europe programme.
The Mystetskyi Arsenal, Ukraine’s flagship cultural institution, brings together various arts – from diverse art practices to music and literature. The multidisciplinary International Book Arsenal Festival, the largest intellectual event in Ukraine, takes place annually within the scope of the institution’s activity.
StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, has long-standing experience in holding international literary events. Authors and artists from all over the world, including Eastern Europe, take part in the festival’s programs. The Stanza International Poetry Festival is a platform for the presentation of Ukrainian poetry in Scotland, among other countries of the world.