Silent film adapted from poem by Iya Kiva

Ukrainian poet and translator Iya Kiva announced the release of a short silent film based on her poem “Is there hot war in the tap … ” The film was shot by director Nadiyka Surzhan’s team.

“Sometimes love finds us, not romantic love, but a kind of connection, like a particular bench in a park where you go to talk. One day, Surzhan sent me a message: ‘I like your poems, and I like you. Let’s have a talk.’ And that conversation has continued ever since, and I hope it will keep going. Meanwhile, Surzhan and her team of like-minded creators have made a silent film (truly!) inspired by my poem ‘Is there hot war in the tap … ’, and soon our interview will appear on her channel ‘Through My Eyes’,” Kiva wrote.

is there hot war in the tap

is there cold war in the tap

how is it that there’s absolutely no war

it was promised for after lunch

we saw the announcement with our own eyes

“war will arrive at fourteen hundred hours”

and it’s already three hours without war

six hours without war

what if there’s no war by the time night falls

we can’t do laundry without war

can’t make dinner

can’t drink tea plain without war

and it’s already eight days without war

we smell bad

our wives don’t want to lie in bed with us

the children have forgotten to smile and complain

why did we always think we’d never run out of war

let’s start, yes, let’s start visiting neighbors to borrow war

on the other side of our green park

start fearing to spill war in the road

start considering life without war a temporary hardship

in these parts it’s considered unnatural

if war doesn’t course through the pipes

into every house

into every throat

Translated by Katherine E. Young

Iya Kiva is a poet and translator, a member of PEN Ukraine, and the author of three poetry collections: “Smile of the Extinguished Fire” (2023), “First Page of Winter” (2019), and “Far from Paradise” (2018). She is also the author of a book of interviews with Belarusian authors, “We Will Wake Up Different: Conversations with Contemporary Belarusian Writers about the Past, Present, and Future of Belarus” (2021). Born in Donetsk, she was forced to move first to Kyiv and then to Lviv due to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

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Main image: screenshot from the movie

Copy editing: Joy Tataryn