“Ukrainian American Poets Respond” Book Launch

It has been 197 days since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Ukrainians are still fighting.

Every morning, I check Twitter to see the updates from Ukrainian journalists, activists, artists, and writers that I follow. There is always news: Here is the devastation and sacrifice. Here is the heroism and resilience. Слава Україні!

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian diaspora tries to collect resources, rally support, and share the stories, names, and photographs to help the Ukrainian people and keep the world from forgetting.

On Friday, September 16, I will join other Ukrainian American poets for a reading at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City.

We will be reading our poems from the “Ukrainian American Poets Respond” anthology edited by Olena Jennings (Poets of Queens) and Virlana Tkacz (Yara Arts Group).

I am honored to have my poems included in this collection, and I hope that some of you will be able to come out on the 16th:

Tickets for the Ukrainian American Poets Respond Book Launch

Ukrainian American Poets Respond Book Launch Information on Facebook

You can also order a copy on Amazon or from an Independent Bookstores near you.

Слава Україні! Slava Ukraini!

New poem in Rust + Moth: “Ми тут (We are here)”

One of my poems, “Ми тут (We are here)” written in response to the war in Ukraine, has been published on Rust + Moth.
I am grateful to the editors for choosing it for the Summer 2022 issue, and I am happy to be able to share it with you.
Screenshot of the published poem”Ми тут” in Rust + Moth.

You can find all the poems in the Summer issue here.

Print copies will be available soon. I’ll update this page with a link.

Reading Thursday in Chicago!

I was invited by Miette Gillette of Whisk(e)y Tit to participate in a reading this Thursday, August 8, 2019 at Trap Door Theatre.  I will be joining Svetlana Lavochkina and Stefan O. Rak, two other writers of Ukrainian ancestry.

Miette was one of the wonderful people at Iambik Audiobooks who helped to turn The Silence of Trees into an audio book (You can read about that here). She has since started her own experimental literature publishing company, Whisk(e)y Tit, to serve as “literary wet nurse” for books that “would otherwise be abandoned in a homogenized literary landscape. In a world gone mad, our refusal to make this sacrifice is an act of civil service and civil disobedience alike.”

The reading will be from 8-10:30 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland Street in Chicago, and will include musical guests. I hope to see some of you there!

Svetlana Lavochkina is a Ukrainian-born novelist, poet and poetry translator, now residing in Germany. In 2013, her novella Dam Duchess was chosen runner-up in the Paris Literary Prize. Her debut novel, Zap, was shortlisted for Tibor & Jones Pageturner Prize 2015. Svetlana’s work has been widely published in the US and Europe. It appeared in AGNI, New Humanist, POEM, Witness, Straylight, Circumference, Superstition Review, Sixfold, Drunken Boat and elsewhere.

Stefan O. Rak lives in New York City, because it makes sense. In the 1940s, his grandparents fled Ukraine for NYC, otherwise he may have never been born. He’s worked as an archival director, film professor, record producer, experimental music programmer, and bartender. Rak’s ADVENTURES OF BASTARD AND M.E. is a pataphysical romp through a seedy underworld of criminal comic characters
Hope to see some of you there!