Poem translations by Ukrainian poet and soldier Maksym Kryvtsov released in Poland

The collection of poems “War Talk-show” (“Talk-show Wojna”) by Maksym Kryvtsov was published by the Borderland Foundation in Poland, as reported on the organization’s website.

The collection is part of the series “Facing the War: A Library of Ukrainian Poetry,” featuring bilingual poetry collections by Ukrainian authors. Borderland Foundation publishes these collections in collaboration with the Lviv publishing house Dzhezva. The book was translated by Aneta Kamińska and edited by Iryna Mulyarchuk and Krzysztof Czyzewski.

“I don’t know what came first, poetry or war, but Maksym Kryvtsov has been writing tirelessly since 2014, when he volunteered for the National Guard of Ukraine. War became a season. He wrote increasingly sharply, less poetically. His dreams were hidden in the trenches. He descended through successive circles of hell. He wrote new fragments of the Ukrainian “Iliad.” Only the Greek gods changed to those from Rivne, where he was born,” expressed Polish writer and curator of the “Borderland” project Krzysztof Czyzewski.

The foundation released a video on its YouTube channel where Staszek Czyżewski and Iryna Mulyarchuk read the last poem from the collection in Polish — “My Head is Rolling from Position to Position…” The portrait of Maksym Kryvtsov was created by Wiesław Szumiński.

The book can be purchased here.  

The series also includes poetry collections “Indian Ocean” (“Ocean Indyjski”) by Dmytro Lazutkin and “Anemia” (“Niedokrwistość”) by Nazar Fedorak.

As reported earlier, on January 7, Ukrainian poet and military volunteer Maksym Kryvtsov died on the frontline. His book “Poetry from the Loop-hole” was published in Ukrainian in 2023. The editing of the poems in Polish was completed just before Kryvtsov’s death.

Translation: Kateryna Yeromenko

Editing: Tanya Mykhaylychenko, Terra Friedman King