Poetry in a Time of War: Voices from Ukraine and Russia | Session 1
Apr 04, 2022 | 2:30-4:30PM EDT | 11:30AM-1:30PM PDT
Panel Discussion on Zoom | Panelist: Polina Barskova (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley); Lyn Hejinian (Department of English, UC Berkeley); Ostap Kin (Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University); Eugene Ostashevsky (New York University); Katharina Raabe (Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin); Maria Stepanova (Poet; Founder, Colta); Moderator: Irina Paperno (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley)
Organized by The UC Berkeley Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Institute of European Studies, Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ISEEES), Townsend Center for the Humanities, Department of English, Division of Arts & Humanities, Letters & Science, and the German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley.
The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley invites you to a poetry reading and discussion in affirmation of the dignity of literature in a time of war.
This hybrid event will feature a panel discussion with poets, translators and editors who will read and discuss poetry by contemporary authors from Ukraine: Yevgenia Belorusets, Boris Khersonsky, Marianna Kiyanovska, Lyuba Yakimchuk, Serhiy Zhadan, and others.
Panelists:
Polina Barskova is a Russian poet and prose writer, who teaches at Berkeley. In recent years, she has been actively translating and introducing poetry from Ukraine. As a literary scholar she works on aesthetic responses to historical catastrophe.
Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator, editor, and publisher, who teaches at Berkeley. The author of over a dozen books of poetry and essays, she has translated contemporary Russian poetry.
Ostap Kin is a translator and editor of Ukrainian poetry into English and literary scholar. He is Archivist/Librarian/Research Center Coordinator at Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University.
Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-American poet and literary scholar. The author of several collections of English-language poetry, he has translated, introduced, and edited poetry and prose from Russia and Ukraine. He teaches at NYU.
Katharina Raabe is the East European Editor at the Suhrkamp Verlag in Berlin where her primary focus is on promoting East European writers around the world. Most recently, she organized readings of poetry and prose from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus in Berlin: “Sprachlos die Sprache verteidigen / Speechless: In Defense of Language.”
Maria Stepanova is a Russian poet, prose writer, and journalist. She is the founder and editor of Colta, an independent, crowd-funded source of cultural news. Her recent work engages with the uses and abuses of historical memory and war.
Information on Session 2 (in-person only) can be found here.