“The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets. An Anthology,” translated by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. London: Glagoslav Publications, 2017. 412 pp. ISBN: 978-1-911414-48-3 (paperback), $36.
“The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets. An Anthology” reflects a search of the Ukrainian nation for its identity, the roots of which lie deep inside Ukrainian poetry. Some of the included poets are well known locally and internationally; among them are Serhiy Zhadan, Halyna Krup, Ostap Slyvynsky, Marianna Kijanowska, Oleh Kotsarev, Anna Bagriana and, the living legend of Ukrainian poetry, Vasyl Holoborodko.
The next Ukrainian poetic generation, the poets Ukrainians like to read today, is also featured prominently in the collection. The group includes poets Les Beley, Olena Herasymyuk, Myroslav Laiuk, Hanna Malihon, Taras Malkovych, Julia Musakovska, Julia Stakhivska and Lyuba Yakimchuk, among others. The works collected in this anthology document poetry in Ukraine responding to the challenges of the times by forging a radical new poetic and reconsidering writing techniques and language itself.
Anatoly Kudryavitsky, the translator, was born in Moscow in 1954. His father was from Dnipro, Ukraine, and his mother was of Irish descent. He has been living in Dublin since 1999 and, between 2006 and 2009, worked as a creative writing tutor for the Irish Writers’ Center. He has published four collections of his poetry as well as three novels written in Russian.