Olena Herasymyuk takes award at the European Championships of Slam Poetry

Ukrainian poet and volunteer medic with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion Olena Herasymyuk (call sign: Hera) won the Special Jury Prize at the 2024 European Championships of Slam Poetry held at Košice, Slovakia, as announced on her X social network page.

Herasymyuk reached the finals with two of her poems and was understandably pleased with her achievement.

“Our voices should be heard throughout the world, and I am proud to represent our common idea on such an incredible European platform. I am proud to have had this difficult experience of participating in the war and to tell others about it through poetry,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

“You know there is a war going on in Ukraine. I can’t help but talk about it because every day ordinary people, who had various professions, who were not military, die on the front lines of Europe – not just Ukraine. Among them are our artist colleagues. Today another artist died at the front. According to our data, which we are just beginning to gather – we do not know all the losses – 214 people of letters died as a result of the full-scale Russian invasion. I would like you to remember those people, to remember them and the things they could have created for the world, but could not because they died. They remain on the stage forever, and remain in our ranks forever,” Herasymyuk said in her speech during the awards ceremony.

A total of 32 national winning poets from different countries took part in the championship. Among them were:

David Samhaber (Austria)

Tilke Wouters (Belgium)

Hrvoje Mimica (Croatia)

Mr Z—Andros Zacharia (Cyprus)

Malda—Martin Malík (Czech Republic)

Sara Hauge (Denmark)

Sven Stears (England)

Iina Gyldén (Estonia)

LAJUNE—Aki Lajunen (Finland)

Yannick Nédélec (France)

Theresa Sperling (Germany)

Satu Onak (Greece)

Wim Landuyt (Holland)

Nóra Judit Kovács (Hungary)

Anna D—Anna Doran (Ireland)

Giuseppe Piccolo (Italy)

Klemencs Rietenis—Artūrs Bricis (Latvia)

Domas Šimaitis (Lithuania)

Dany Coimbra (Luxembourg)

Milanco Pendev (Macedonia)

Patrick Raugstad (Norway)

Maria Caetano Vilalobos (Portugal)

Simona Sigartău (Romania)

Sandra Zivkov (Serbia)

Gordon Christopher Powrie (Scotland)

Freya—Alexandra Gábelová (Slovakia)

Nika Gradišek (Slovenia)

Marta Dylan—Marta Reina Garaizar (Spain)

Ingrid Stenlund (Sweden)

Honorable Scarabée—Loc Nguyen (Switzerland)

Olena Herasymyuk (Ukraine)

Winners are: 

1st place: Theresa Sperling (Germany)

2nd place: Sven Stears (England)

3rd place: Gordon Christopher Powrie (Scotland)

Olena Herasymyuk is a Ukrainian poet and writer who authored the books “Deafness,” “Execution Calendar,” and “A Prison Song.” She previously won  second prize in the Smoloskyp literary competition. Herasymyuk is a volunteer medic with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion, where she served in a military hospital in Avdiivka and on the zero line near Pisky and Vodyane. Herasymyuk is a co-founder of the “Unwritten” project, a comemoration of the literary people who died in the war.

The European Championships of Slam Poetry is an international poetry slam competition. It is part of the Downtown New York Festival.

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Main image: Sergey Yagubov

Copy editing: Ben Angel