Halyna Kruk : Seven poems : translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky

 

 

 

I opened the last door, behind which neither of us existed—

 

I opened the last door, behind which neither of us existed—

another woman shuffles around the kitchen in worn slippers, clanging jars

another man lazes on the couch in track pants

                               smoking out of boredom and spitting on the floor

the other woman looks nothing like me, like two drops—

                                         one from the sea and the other from the faucet

the other man, swollen like a lifebuoy, rubbed at the bends,

why’s he here? a reminder of summer

                                         could these two really have had a summer

I opened the door and let in the light

                                         that beats like a bird against a pane

I opened the door to where no one cares about the bird

another woman, fat and flat like an unplaned board

another man, fragile and hopeless like a rotten split log

not even a domestic squabble could strike a spark from them

ignite a fire

only ashes in the ashtray, ashes on their heads, everywhere ashes

I opened the heavy door like the lid of a coffin, like the eyelids of the dead

I opened the door, I can no longer close it

 

 

 

black hole

 

love leaves a hole in a woman’s heart the size of a man
dream first, then measure, minimize, exaggerate,
understate, stay far from the edge
God, don’t listen to the woman in love, the disappointed woman,
the abandoned woman—don’t listen to any of them,
they themselves don’t understand what they’re asking
love leaves a hole in the woman’s heart the size of another woman
a gaping void, a lacuna that cannot be sealed,
antimatter, a blast wave, a prayer for revenge,
God, don’t walk on

love leaves a hole in the woman’s heart the size of God

 

 

dropped stitch

 

I climbed into myself headfirst, legs and all
I pulled everything into my mouth   tasted   spat it out
repented   renounced   matured
I thought to myself: I’ll take the first train out of here
anywhere at all   in every direction
if death were a writer’s residency,
I would have applied long ago
nothing personal   just sometimes you have to feel reality
          as getting burned
there are always a few plots in your head,
you never settle on a single script,
you create something
I felt like god had failed a bit with the world as a whole,
especially the mortal
sometimes the best poem—like sex with a stranger—
is about nothing you want to remember
I knew I didn’t need anyone enough
to give him a human name
a few careless strokes
nervous laughter
a dropped stitch

 

 

summer is finite; the field, endless

 

***
summer is finite; the field, endless
there is nothing in sight
except the transparent bottom along which
some of us are returning home
with faded bangs—golden brown
like hot loaves taken out of the oven

maybe the grasshopper chirps too high
maybe the sun beats in our eyes too sharply
maybe people are unfinished creatures
like red, hollow bricks
the ones you fire in the kiln’s heat
fingers and lips stained with blueberry ink

as long as the pond is thick and shiny
as long as you walk across the scorching sand
as long as you can outrun this shadow
long-legged, spirited, angular
this one slighty lower this one slightly heavier
the sun will roll into the underbrush as if into the jaws
of a whale or a cat—everything in its own way
will be too big a “house” for us small ones

 

 

God of forgotten words in fervent prayers

 

God of forgotten words in fervent prayers
God of the crucified on all three crosses,
God of the not very sinful and indifferent
God of the Myrrhbearers at the tomb the seven
who went to honor the body, even if he’s not God,
the tortured human body, earthly body
God of despair and sorrow of bitter wormwoods,
will you again roll away the stone from human understanding?
will you again show them the way out to your freedom?
a trio appeared to Mary of Magdala:
two angels and a man emerging from the fog
went over to her, not allowing her to touch him
I’m on my way, I’m no longer here, Magdelena,
my body’s ruined, and my spirit hovers
where there’s neither thorn of pain nor spike of nail,
testify Mary, to others that for each of us,
even the worst, God leaves a chance
to exit the body of suffering into the inextinguishable light

 

 

you want to remove the pain quickly like a shirt

 

you want to remove the pain quickly like a shirt
forgetting to unbutton the cuffs
the small white buttons that look like pills
popping out, the sleeves turned inside out
neither here nor there, neither on nor off
with hands contorted in pain
you tug at them, eventually pulling them free from flesh
the small white buttons that look like pills
good people advise
wearing a shirt without buttons
without sleeves or with them rolled up
why’d you have to put that shirt on anyway
with the small white buttons that look like pills
if they don’t get rid of pain
some poems are like prescriptions for medicines
that are no longer made

 

 

observing winter from the nursery window

 

observing winter from the nursery window
emptied and silent, smothered, shrunk,
like a cell that’s outgrown herself—
too mommy, too small, too
sentimental over things the eye catches
and the hand caresses

this road to the alley’s exit, this lantern, snowfall,
waiting makes you see them
in every passerby
but the voice of reason fetters false hope:
don’t guess, don’t call unexpectedly at inconvenient times

letting go is the hardest of adult lessons
like pulling a child’s sled behind you
choking on acrid, ticklish laughter
when something was already pulling
the rope from your hands

 

 

 

 

 

Halyna Kruk (1974) is an award-winning Ukrainian poet, writer, translator, and scholar. She is the author of five books of poetry, Grown-Up (2017), (Co)existence (2013), The Face beyond the Photograph (2005), Footprints on Sand, and Journeys in Search of a Home (both 1997), a collection of short stories, Anyone but Me (2021), which won the 2022 Kovaliv Fund Prize, and four children’s books, two of which have been translated into 15 languages. A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails was her first volume of poetry published in English (Arrowsmith Press, 2022). Her numerous literary awards include the Sundara Ramaswamy Prize, the 2023 Women in Arts Award, the 2021 BookForum Best Book Award, the Smoloskyp Poetry Award, the Bohdan Ihor Antonych Prize, and the Hranoslov Award. She holds a PhD in Ukrainian baroque literature (2001). Kruk is a member of Ukrainian PEN; she lives and teaches in Lviv.

Photo credit: Oleksandr Laskin

Ali Kinsella holds an MA in Slavic studies from Columbia University and has been translating from Ukrainian for twelve years. She won the 2019 Kovaliv Fund Prize for her translation of Taras Prokhasko’s novella, Anna’s Other Days, forthcoming from Harvard University Press. In 2021, she was awarded a Peterson Literary Fund grant to translate Vasyl Makhno’s Eternal Calendar. She co-edited Love in Defiance of Pain (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2022), an anthology of short fiction to support Ukrainians during the war. Her other published translations include pieces by Stanislav Aseyev, Lyubko Deresh, Kateryna Kalytko, Myroslav Laiuk, Bohdana Matiiash, Olena Stiazhkina, and others.

Photo credit:  Steve Kaiser

Pushcart Prize poet, award-winning translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books, Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of six poetry collections including Bad Harvest, a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry. She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Grant, a Sheila Motton Book Award, and a co-recipient of a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted as part of the Carnegie Mellon University Press Classic Contemporary Series. Her new poetry book, Those Absences Now Closest, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon in fall 2024.

Photo credit:  Max Hoffman

Kinsella and Orlowsky’s co-translations of Natalka Bilotserkivets’s selected poems, Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow (Lost Horse Press, 2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize and the winner of the 2022 AAUS Translation Prize. Their co-translations from the Ukrainian of Halyna Kruk’s selected poems, Lost in Living, is forthcoming from Lost Horse Press in spring, 2024.

2022 Griffin Poetry Prize shortlist interviews: Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky

Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky, translated from the Ukrainian written by Natalka Bilotserkivets
Lost Horse Press, 2021
2022 Griffin Poetry Prize • International Shortlist
interviewed by rob mclennan

The 2022 Griffin Poetry Prize will be announced on June 15, 2022.

Ali Kinsella has been translating from Ukrainian for nine years. Her published works include essays, poetry, monographs, and subtitles to various films. With Ostap Kin she translated Vasyl Lozynsky’s chapbook The Maidan After Hours (2017). She won the 2019 Kovaliv Fund Prize for her translation of Taras Prokhasko’s Anna’s Other Days. She holds an MA in Slavic studies from Columbia University, where she focused on Eastern European history and literature. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Ali lived in both Western and Central Ukraine for nearly five years. She now lives in Chicago, where she also sometimes works as a baker.

Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of six poetry collections, including Bad Harvest (2019), a Massachusetts Book Awards ‘Must Read’ in Poetry. She is a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Grant, a Sheila Motton Book Award, and a co-recipient of a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship. She is a contributing poetry editor to Solstice Literary Magazine and founder of Night Riffs: A Solstice Magazine Readings & Music Series. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Providence College, and is a Writer-in-Residence at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.

Natalka Bilotserkivets has published five volumes of poetry. Her work, known for lyricism and the quiet power of despair, became a hallmark of Ukraine’s literary life of the 1980s and 1990s. The collections Allergy and Central Hotel were Books of the Year in 2000 and 2004, respectively. Still, the majority of her oeuvre remains unknown in the West. She lives and works in Kyiv.

I’m curious about the process of two translators on a single work. What was your process of working together, and how did this particular project emerge?

Ali Kinsella: This project was very new for me in that I hadn’t ever worked so intensively on poetry, nor had I ever collaborated so thoroughly with another translator. We agreed that I should do the first, quite literal drafts and that Dzvinia should come in after me and shape them into something more resembling poems. This approach was sort of obvious, given our respective strengths. Each draft then had at least one collaborative editing session over the phone, but sometimes three with extra notes emailed back and forth. As we have now been working together for over two years, we can work much faster. In working with Dzvinia, I have really had a master class in poetry and I can anticipate some of her critiques and concerns better—or at least I’d like to think so.

Dzvinia Orlowsky: You definitely do, Ali! And thanks to Ali’s careful attention to detail, I’ve broadened my understanding and appreciation of unexpected tense shifts, gender fluidity, and the nuances of the Ukrainian language.

With respect to our collaborative process, Ali summed it up perfectly. I would only add that in finding our complementary strengths as translators, we also had to develop a sense of trust for each other as readers. I lean more toward figurative rather than literal interpretations—leaps of faith! So I tended to look for metaphors where maybe Natalka didn’t intend them. Ali favored staying closer to the original text and its literal meaning. We also interpreted several of the poems in this collection differently. For example, Ali understood Wolf Wine Bar to be about climate change, whereas I saw it as a poem about war (note: this was prior to Russia’s February invasion). Honestly, it could be read both ways. This kind of discussion made our project that much more challenging and exciting. Natalka gave us the freedom to interpret her poems as we felt them, but we were also able to reach out to her for help on poems that touched on subject matter we weren’t familiar with.

I suppose a question I should ask Ali, given your previous experience of translating works from Ukrainian, how did the experience of translating Bilotserkivets’ work differ? Were there elements you needed to approach through translation that were unique to her poetry?

AK: Translating poetry is very different from prose, mainly because the art form is so compact. An obvious sacrifice that must often be made in poetry translation is rhyme, but beyond rhyme, there are meter, sound, imagery, and meaning. Not all of these elements can be preserved and choices have to be made. Of course, there are other considerations when translating prose—tone, register—but the endless blank page leaves so much room for compensation. If a joke or pun doesn’t work where it was in the original, throw one in somewhere else!

Most of the poems included in Eccentric Days were originally written in free verse, but there were a few that we “converted” since we were sure we couldn’t preserve the rhyme scheme and have the poem still come off as serious. So, the real new challenge for me as someone who came from primarily translating prose, was paying so much attention to sound (especially since musicality is such an important element to Bilotserkivets), lyricism, and image. Dzvinia was more willing than I to consider metaphorical rather than literal meaning in order to benefit the poem as a whole, and I’m very grateful to her for helping to lead me away from strict literalness (which isn’t exactly how I’d categorize my prose translations, but by comparison they certainly approach verbatim).

The collection is an impressive size, in no small part to the decision to include Natalka Bilotserkivets’ original writing in Ukrainian alongside your translations. For such a hefty work, what was behind the choice to include the work in its original form?

AK: The book came out as part of a bilingual series. The publisher, Christine Lysnewycz Holbert, had a minimum length for us, but put no cap on the number of poems or quantity of miscellanea. Still, we only included the poems that we wanted to be a part of this collection; this was far from an exercise in throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck.

DO:  Many literary magazines and journals publish the original text alongside the translated work. In addition to other advantages, it grants ocular proof that such a poem exists!  As a translator, I welcome the presence of a foreign language on the page. In our book, you’ll see that the poems mirror each other fairly consistently. There are exceptions, however. For example, in our translation of Natalka’s poem “Nature,” the last stanza is elongated in comparison to the original. The poem’s intention and meaning hasn’t changed; but the artistic decision, here, is to slow the pace—to emphasize the speaker losing those cherished and no longer audible, sensory sounds. We wanted to hold that line, the word “secret,” in suspension before resolving to “tears, laughter.” After all, if it’s given up too easily, it never really was a secret…

Given the way the Ukrainian language has shifted and changed over the years, I feel Lost Horse Press’s bilingual books provide an invaluable record of Ukrainian-language poetry at specific time in its literary history. I appreciate being able to switch between Ukrainian and English—with the end goal of improving my Ukrainian. 

Was there a difficulty, through your translations, of maintaining what you referred to as her “ungendered present tense”?

AK: Well, the specific problem of gender is an issue having to do with Ukrainian grammar that doesn’t exist in English. Ukrainian is a highly inflected language with cases that give us noun and adjective declensions, verbal conjugations, and gender, which affects nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the past tense. This might make Ukrainian sound rigid, but the words’ taking all these modifications actually means speakers can be quite creative and also leave many things—like the sentences of subjects—merely implied. (Perhaps you, too, remember that eye-opening day in Spanish 101 when you learned you could just say, “tienes,” to mean you and have.) So, while the past tense has often felt too restrictive for Natalka as it forces her to pick a gender for her speaker (something English speakers never face), the present tense allows her to get away without using pronouns (something English speakers can’t usually pull off).

There were times when we were, in fact, made to choose either “he” or “she,” but mostly we found other ways to sidestep getting boxed in—“you” is the most obvious choice, and one that Natalka herself often makes. On the topic of grammatical gender in language, I do remember just barely catching a big mistake before the book went to press. Natalka has a small little untitled poem that punches above its weight class that starts, “Life is simple and quiet / and I love it.” I had mistakenly translated the pronoun “it” here as “he” (they are the same in this case), which completely changes the poem and actually in that state we had considered discarding it. But this is the challenge of a non-native speaker who has to actively remind herself that the “hes” and “shes” she sees are often just “its.”

DO: I’d say Ali has answered this question thoroughly, and I feel lucky that I didn’t have to wrestle with these considerations to the extent that she did. 

In terms of making poetic/thematic choices while maintaining an “ungendered present tense,” I agree—particularly early on, this created some difficulty for us because, as Ali notes, if we got the pronoun wrong, we could easily miss the point of the poem. And we didn’t want to overwhelm Natalka with picky, poem-to-poem questions. Early on, I spent too much time making sure I got individual poems “right.” I had to remind myself what I know as a poet shaping my own work into a collection:  each poem informs the poems that follow it. By the time Ali and I were half-way through our manuscript, we had a better sense of its constellation and were able to resolve gender and tense questions more quickly. As for Natalka’s proclivity toward using the present tense, that worked well for us. It contributed to a sense of immediacy and intimacy which we strove to capture in her work.

Since the completion of Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, have there been any further translation projects the two of you might consider collaborating on, whether Natalka Bilotserkivets’ work or anyone else?

DO: We are always interested in Natalka’s work and have published several co-translations of her newer poems. In addition, Ali and I are very moved by the work of a Lviv-based award-winning poet, translator, and fiction writer for children, Halyna Kruk. We have been translating some of her poems. Serendipitously, this past spring Lost Horse Press approached us about publishing a collection of her poetry. I was at AWP at the time we signed the contract. Look for that book in 2024!