Serhiy Zhadan
Serhiy Zhadan was born in the Luhansk Region of Ukraine and educated in Kharkiv, where he lives today. He is the author of twelve books of poetry. What We Live For/What We Die For, a book of his selected poetry in English translations by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, was published by Yale University Press in the spring of 2019. His prose works include: Voroshilovgrad (2010), Mesopotamia (2014) and The Orphanage (2017). Zhadan’s books have been translated into twenty languages. He is the front man for the band Zhadan and the Dogs.
Zhadan has worked with Yara Arts Group, a resident company of La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York on several theatre productions, including:
1917-2017: Tychyna, Zhadan & the Dogs (2017)
Hitting Bedrock (2015)
Underground Dreams (2013-2014)
Articles in English:
New Yorker - Marci Stone "The Bard of Eastern Ukraine, Where Things Are Falling Apart" Nov 28, 2016
New Yorker on attack in March 2014
Forbes on Zhadan April 2015
London Review of Books - Peter Pomerantsev "Ukraine's Mesopotamia" March 4, 2014
Olena Jennings "The Work of Serhiy Zhadan and the War In Ukraine" Aspen Review 2018
Mayhill Fowler on Zhadan
Zhadan's Poetry (translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps)
Alcohol (2002)
The green river water
slows in warm bends
fish zeppelins
scatter the plankton
and tired bird catchers
attempt to catch
every word.
Hold on to
the brightly colored rags and scotch tape
that bind the slashed wrists
of these heroic times.
One day you will turn off this radio,
you'll get used to her,
to her breathing
and, dressed in your T-shirt,
she'll bring you water in the middle of the night.
On the terrace the left-over cups of tea
are filling up with rain water
and cigarette butts,
you and I share a cold
you and I share long conversations --
you don't notice the morning rain
you go to sleep late
and you wake up late
I write poems about how I love
this woman, and I invent
newer and newer words
to avoid
telling her.
translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
Take Only What Is Most Important (2015)
Take only what is most important. Take the letters.
Take only what you can carry.
Take the icons and the embroidery, take the silver,
Take the wooden crucifix and the golden replicas.
Take some bread, the vegetables from the garden, then leave.
We will never return again.
We will never see our city again.
Take the letters, all of them, every last piece of bad news.
We will never see our corner store again.
We will never drink from that dry well again.
We will never see familiar faces again.
We are refugees. We'll run all night.
We will run past fields of sunflowers.
We will run from dogs, rest with cows.
We'll scoop up water with our bare hands,
sit waiting in camps, annoying the dragons of war.
You will not return and friends will never come back.
There will be no smoky kitchens, no usual jobs,
There will be no dreamy lights in sleepy towns,
no green valleys, no suburban wastelands.
The sun will be a smudge on the window of a cheap train,
rushing past cholera pits covered with lime.
There will be blood on your heels,
tired guards on borderlands covered with snow,
a postman with empty bags shot down,
a priest with a hapless smile hung by his ribs,
the quiet of a cemetery, the noise of a command post,
and unedited lists of the dead,
so long that there won't be time
to check them for your own name.
translated from the Ukrainian
by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
they once lived in this building
see the fading red paint blistering on the window frames
it’s from those times when someone decided to put
them all into one building so that their breath could be heard
in the hallways
breath like wind structured in fear
as you look in the yard
you can see soldiers laying asphalt
and planting pines
they were led out at night their dreams scattering
from their shoulders like rats from window sills
their grey shirts were soaked with sweat
and yellow piss hid in their bodies
like contraband
those who led them out enjoyed the scent
of the night scene
grey underwear wet with sudden awakening
women with their faces smeared
with makeup and fear
at the corner newsstand there’s warm lemonade
and sticky violet drops of syrup that pull your skin
and stick to your fingers and lips
bees brush against your clothing and eyelashes with their heavy
tails
then the shadow of the building creeps up to your feet
like a great flood
if only you could get home sooner and shut the door tight
turn the heavy black lock and fasten the chain
listen to the wind rattling the door jamb
and with your cheek
feel the sun beat
against the bare window
they were led out
quickly through the street
before the black automobiles swallowed them
so for a moment they were still breathing oxygen
the oxygen of the building, holding it
trying not to let out
the smallest drop of freedom
the smallest drop of hysteria
when you decide to separate words
into those you used at least once and those you’ve never touched
you will feel the silence that ripped apart
the heart of that night – the tortured circle
you sense each time you return to this place
because long ago fragments of hot lexemes
grew cold in mouths filled with fear
and the man with the serious expression
and his dark notebook and wooden pencil
left behind only silence
that fell like a dead bird
it’s simple, such buildings exist
where the final border is particularly grim
where hell and the veins of underground ore are unexpectedly close
where time sticks out like lumps of coal from the ground
where death begins and where literature ends.
translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps