Apricots of Donbas

 

Apricots of Donbas / Lyuba Yakimchuk
trans. from the Ukrainian by
Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky & Svetlana Lavochkina
Scio, OR: Lost Horse Press, 2021, c2015.
166 p.

I'm starting off my Women in Translation month with some unusual (for me) books. I generally read a lot of novels, so I'm branching out a little to include some poetry today.

I'm not sure how to talk about poetry, so will just say that I found this collection moving and interesting. Yakimchuk is writing about the experience of the 2014 Russian invasion of Donbas, where she and her family had lived for generations.

She creates imagery of her past and of the current situation of bombs and invaders, of fleeing and remembering her home, with evocative mentions of the apricots of the region as a symbol. 

She plays with language, breaking it up into its parts (and I have to recognize the skill of the translators here, able to render this into English with the intention of the original coming through). The poems are not opaque, they are readable and understandable, even while they manipulate language to express the intent of a poem. I had to read slowly, and reread a couple, but I found this a cohesive and meaningful collection. I have read a few of Yakimchuk's poems in other collections, like Words for War or The Frontier, so it was nice to have her work gathered together this way to really experience it fully.

If you're interested in women's voices responding to war, and want to encounter a popular Ukrainian poet, I recommend this strong collection.