With the sponsorship and support of many important cultural and civil society associations, as well as universities, the Italian tour of acclaimed Ukrainian poets Iya Kiva and Iryna Shuvalova is scheduled to take place in several Italian cities from May 7th to May 18th. Posters detailing each event are provided below, containing all needed information. We hope The Dreaming Machine’s readers will help build the events by circulating the posters and informing friends who live in those areas.
Both poets, whose work has been featured over the past two years in The Dreaming Machine and in La Macchina Sognante (links provided below) will be performing their poetry solo in some events and jointly in others, in Ukrainian followed by Italian translation. Audiences will have an opportunity to engage in dialog with them on many topics related to literature in times of war, artistic production and international activism, both literary and political, as the two of them have been very active in the past two years in supporting resistance in their country and in diaspora.
An interesting aspect of their tour is related to the perspective each of the poets can provide on the invasion and resistance: Iya Kiva was in Ukraine and had been an internal refugee since the beginning of the 2014 war in Donbas; basically, one of thousands displaced persons forced to move and settle in different cities like Kyiv and Lviv, while writing at the same time. Many of her poems testify to these estranging experiences on top of reckoning with the new, everyday reality of war and resistance to the invasion as a volunteer. Iryna Shuvalova was working in China, at the university of Nanking, at the end of February 2022 and much of her experience of the war was outside the country, with all the ensuing feeling of helplessness, worry for everyone at home and guilt. Poetry written under such conditions has a very deep, soul searching quality that has an enriching effect on poetry world-wide. The international activism of Ukrainian poets has been exemplary in creating conditions of solidarity and intellectual exchange. The activity of translation, both in journals and in the form of whole books has also been very important for the circulation and appreciation of the important work coming out of Ukraine and we hope to continue on this path, hopefully changing the topic towards post war, peace and reconstruction topics.
The last three events held in the Milan area (on the 15,16 and 17) are book presentations of the newly issued book by Iya Kiva, the bilingual Ukrainian and Italian collection “La Guerra è sempre seduta su tutte le sedie” (War is always sitting on all chairs), translated by Yuliya Chernyshova and Pina Piccolo. The events are co-sponsored by La Vita Felice, the publisher of the book, and Vitaukr, an organization of the Ukrainian diaspora that has been actively supporting poetry tours and Ukrainian arts and design projects in Italy.
Iryna Shuvalova, at the Forum Austriaco di Cultura, in Rome, on May 7th.
