Subterranean Fire

Subterranean Fire / Natalka Bilotserkivets
trans. by various translators
NY: Glagoslav, 2022.
178 p.

Today's read is a bit different: it's a collection of the selected poems of Natalka Bilotserkivets. She's a well-respected Ukrainian poet with a long career, and this is a collection of some of her best known work.

It's an interesting collection, as there are ten different translators represented here, and a few of the poems are shared two or three, even four times, showing different translators' approaches to the piece. I liked this feature a lot, as I often find that poetry is difficult to render out its original language. This gave a sense of transparency and a feeling of how translators work when they are dealing with poetry. And it also shows that a poem's vibe can be altered by the word choice and rythym when shifted into a new language. It really made me think about how much we can truly grasp a poem if we don't speak or read the original language.

That said, I do very much appreciate that I can read her poetry thanks to translators who do the hard work. These poems are all quite short, full of imagery and focused on daily life experience. They are more realist than fantastical, and I find them easy to grasp as there isn't too much focus on the language/sounds over images. She's been publishing since 1976 so there is a wide range of topic choice, but many of them deal with nature, everyday life, and human relationships. I found this collection gave a nice overview of her work, and as mentioned, the multiple translations side by side were also illuminating. 

If you're interested in checking out some Ukrainian poetry, this is definitely one to explore. 

NOTE: Translators are: James Brasfield with Lada Kolomiyets, Olena Jennings, Michael M. Naydan, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Andrew Sorokowski, Myroslava Stefaniuk, and Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps