An essay by Maria G. Rewakowicz, published in ‘Los Angeles Review of Books’, 22 Feb 2022
Ever since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and soon after stirred the conflict in the southeast region of Donbas, the theme of war has figured prominently in Ukrainian prose and poetry. The ongoing war has inspired two poetic anthologies in English translation, Letters from Ukraine: Poetry Anthology (2016) and Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (2017), as well as, more recently, two volumes in the Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series published by Lost Horse Press: Serhiy Zhadan’s A New Orthography (2020) and Lyuba Yakimchuk’s Apricots of Donbas (2021). Both Zhadan and Yakimchuk come from the conflict-ridden Donbas and, even though they no longer live there, have emerged as the region’s trusted spokespersons. Yakimchuk, born in Pervomaisk of the Luhansk Oblast, now occupied by the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, resides in Kyiv, and Zhadan, born in Starobilsk, also of the Luhansk Oblast, now under Ukrainian control, lives in Kharkiv.
Read more at ‘Los Angeles Review of Books‘