Critically-acclaimed poet Ilya Kaminsky presents Ukrainian poetry featured in the collection In the Hour of War, joined by fellow poets and translators Yuliya Musakovska and Olena Jennings.
This event will take place in person at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on the 7th Floor.
At this event, award-winning poet and author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa Ilya Kaminsky will introduce New Yorkers to Ukrainian poetry. He will be joined by Yuliya Musakovska, a fellow award-winning Ukrainian poet, and Olena Jennings, a NY-based poet and translator. In addition to recently published translations of Yuliya’s poems, Ilya and Olena will read translations from Ukrainian poets that are part of the collection In the Hour of War, co-edited by Ilya and published by Arrowsmith Press. Poets whose works will be featured include Ostap Slyvynsky, Lesyk Panasyuk, Iryna Shuvalova, Kateryna Kalytko, Dmytro Blyznyuk, and Anastasia Afanasieva.
To join the event in-person | Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. All registered seats are released shortly before start time, and seats may become available at that time. A standby line will form 30 minutes before the program.
About the Authors:
Ilya Kaminsky is an award winning poet, author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). He collaborates frequently with painters, sculptors, musicians, choreographers, and theater artists. Odesa, Kaminsky’s recent collaboration with photographer Yelena Yamchuk, published by Gost Books, was listed by Time Magazine among The 20 Best Photo Books of 2022. In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”
Yuliya Musakovska is an award-winning Ukrainian poet and translator. She has published five poetry collections, among them Hunting for Silence (2014) and Men, Women, and Children (2015). Her most recent one, The God of Freedom (2021), is forthcoming from Arrowsmith Press in May 2024 in English translation by Olena Jennings and the author. The God of Freedom reflects on many events of Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine that began in 2014 before taking its full-scale form in 2022. The collection was shortlisted for the Lviv UNESCO City of Literature Prize and named in the top eight nominees for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize, Ukraine’s most prestigious literary award. Poems from this book have been translated into many languages and published in The Southern Review, AGNI, Tupelo Quarterly, NELLE, The Common, and other journals and anthologies. Yuliya Musakovska received many awards in Ukraine, including the prestigious Smoloskyp Prize for young authors (2010) and the DICTUM Prize (2013). Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and published worldwide. Yuliya Musakovska translates poetry from and to Swedish and English, focusing on the translation of contemporary Ukrainian authors. She is a member of PEN Ukraine.
Olena Jennings is the author of the poetry collection
The Age of Secrets (Lost Horse Press, 2022), the chapbook
Memory Project, and the novel
Temporary Shelter (Cervena Barva Press, 2021). She is a translator of collections by Ukrainian poets,
Kateryna Kalytko, together with Oksana Lutsyshyna, Iryna Shuvalova, together with the author, and Vasyl Makhno. She was shortlisted for the Ukrainian Literature in Translation Prize 2023 for her translations of Yuliya Musakovska’s poetry. She founded and curates Poets of Queens reading series and press.
