In this episode, Claire chats to poet Iya Kiva.
Iya is a Ukrainian poet, translator, and member of Pen Ukraine. She was born in 1984 in Donetsk, studied at Donetsk National University (philology, cultural studies), then later studied graphic design at another educational institution.
In 2014, she was forced to move to Kyiv because of the Russo-Ukrainian War. She is the author of three poetry collections “Подальше от рая» (Futher from Heaven; 2018), “Перша сторінка зими” (The First Page of Winter; 2019), “Сміх згаслої ватри” (Laughter of an extinguished fire; 2023), as well as a book of interviews with Belarusian authors “Ми прокинемось іншими: розмови з сучасними білоруськими письменниками про минуле, теперішнє і майбутнє Білорусі” (We’ll Wake Up Different: Conversations with Contemporary Belarusian writers on Past, Present and Future of Belarus; 2021), dedicated to the 2020-2021 protests in Belarus.
Kiva’s poems have been translated into more than 30 languages. Her poetry books in translations have been published in Bulgaria, Poland, Italy and Sweden: «Свидетел на безименност» (Witness of namelessness; in Bulgarian, translator – Denis Olegov, 2022), «Чорні ружі часу / Czarne róże czasu» (Black Roses of Time; in Polish and original, translator – Aneta Kaminska, 2022), «Осиротілі дерева / Osierocone drzewa / The orphaned trees» (in original and Polish and English translations; translated into Polish – Aneta Kaminska, translated into English – Philip Nikolayev and Yevgeniya Kanyshcheva, 2024, Poland; Versopolis project), La guerra è sempre seduta su tutte le sedie (The war is always sitting on all the chairs; 2024, translated into Italian – Yuliia Chernyshova and Pina Piccolo), Tidens nya alphabet (The new alphabet of the time; 2024, translated into Swedish – Mikael Nydahl & Diana Dobrodij).She is the winner of the II poetic tournament named after Nestor Chronicler (2019), laureate of the Special Prize “LitAkcent” Award (2019) for the book “The First Page of Winter”, laureate of the Literature Prize “Metaphor” for translators (2020). She was also on the short list of the Women In Arts Award. The Resistance 2024, founded by Ukrainian Institute and UN Women Ukraine.
She has been translating Polish and Belarusian poetry since 2019, she collaborates with the project “Library” in Ukraine as a translator and editor of children´s books from English. From 2016-2021, she worked with many Ukrainian medias as a cultural journalist. As a writer, she has participated in numerous writers’ residences and fellowship programs, for example, Gaude Polonia Fellowship program of the Minister of Culture of Poland (2021), and International Writing Program (2023, USA).
Iya is currently based in Lviv.
You can read more of Iya´s work here at Versopolis and here.
These are the fantastic poems which Iya read -
eight years of saying: back home there’s a war so I finally accept it: my home is a war it´s a slow train cross-country east to west where death transports life night falls to the ground with the spasms of wilted flowers and lies down in our mouths with teeth rotten from silence now our language is volunteer-refugee chatter where sirens sing songs to Odysseus now our memory is freedom’s stained vyshyvanka her long walk from heart to heart Translated by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk
once you’ve left your home, you can never stop on the road never say again: put down your baggage, we have arrived, because footsteps are the only cradle you carry on your back without the right to fall, to pause, to circle back to sing with trembling wrists echoing the tremors of dead trees once you’ve left your home, never hide between fingers from the bricks from which you build up the throat of sorrow pressing its seal onto the paint and wax of time, which crumbles like a nut with a black heart embedding itself under the skin like the sun’s scratchy tongue once you’ve left your home, words cannot be found for the love of a place where you’ll relapse into the silent corridor of childhood where things eye you before a game that sinks through the ice of bliss that darkened long ago, like grandmother’s ring on your finger, and grew as heavy as a family album in the memory cemetery once you’ve left your home, you can’t gaze into the window anymore behind which the roses of a life in full bloom await you because your garden has drifted away with you and water can you hear, water is enveloping your body filled with the thirst of a sea that, like freedom, is impossible to cross March 31, 2023 Translated by Philip Nikolayev
I’d like to tell you that the land here has not changed one bit, but that would be untrue, the kind of cruel and futile lie that they sprinkle to soothe a child’s eager curiosity the trees here only pretend to be trees, the trees here fail, lifting up their branches, as if yielding themselves prisoners in surrender to their own tribe, to strangers and to this bitch of an era where matches are born straight from the buds and the river of life burns so well, burning with shame, that it has dried up, unable anymore to fill the summer with bumblebee laughter and the winter with the honey of care the land here has aged so much in one year that where for centuries we saw the smooth pretty face of water now the wrinkles are palm-deep and it sometimes gets even worse, yes, as if the sun now were shining upside down, but who looks up these days anyway the sky here is so quiet, throw a knife at it and it won’t flinch, it’ll endure this too, silently swallowing dagger after dagger, tearing its cheeks to blood, as they tear to shreds clothes that no longer protect; evil eye, you know, it gropes you from within, like lusty hands in a crowd, calmly, shamelessly, with the feel of unhurried crime, to the very heart; and the heart stops while you live on; but quietly, without a heart; without hope; at luck’s mercy and so, the land here, heartless now, like soil in a museum, lies half alive and unconscious before everyone’s eyes, you barely have time to take in a gulp of air and it’s already poisoned – scratching, growling, like an old dog that is dying and all of this is so, you know, fanciful, that everyone has learned to pretend as that they can’t smell their own decomposition, it stinks so badly now that you only recognize your own by their stench – those so proud, so subdued, so mercilessly beautiful death, you know, always adds beauty; even to the point of convulsive laughter; isn’t it funny to walk the same path all your life only to miss oneself at the very first intersection how could this be real; isn’t this earth sick of going around in circles in with blindfolded eyes, as in a game of blind man’s buff; hey, you, come on, guess where you’ll fall and not get up so many good people here, you know, and they all lie in the mire; in heaps; arms spread; headless, as the case may be this land is like a facial scar; everyone sees it, but the courage is lacking to ask what has actually happened; life is too short, you know, to gaze pointblank at a land, especially someone else’s; there’s a kind of adultery to it as if love had suddenly become an artificial language that we study and study it endlessly – only without meaning I wanted to tell you that this land is poetry and you know no worse than I how many readers poetry has July 6, 2023 Translated by Philip Nikolayev
speech drains away like water between the hands the drought of time sketches a warlike landscape we stand and walk stand and walk simultaneously either under water or above water swaying the sky’s seesaw on our shoulders flags of hands flutter in the twilight of anger like a feathergrass of birds fallen out of nests the star of childhood – an unstoppable skiff – prepares a bloody bed on the broken stalks of evil the path to love – a needle’s alarmed song with the tireless mill of death in place of lyrics where – with each step – the sunken chime of the prayer bell smashes its brow against the slow ruin of guilt where – with each step – memory’s blast craters bloom like reeds trumpets of hate sift the soil through a merciless sieve of fire – houses used to stand here instead of the night the wind licks away the tears of orphaned trees like a dog tied by a rope to the river June 13, 2023 Translated by Philip Nikolayev
Episode 29 - Iya Kiva