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Latvia
“Winter King” poetry collection released in Latvian
04.07.2025
The poetry collection “Winter King and Other Poems” by Ukrainian poet, essayist, translator, literary critic, and academic Ostap Slyvynsky has been published in Latvian translation. The collection was published by the Orbīta publishing house with five translators having contributed to its creation: Ingmāra Balode, Jānis Elsbergs, Māra Poļakova, Marians Rižijs, and Arvis Viguls.
“I’m happy this book brought together so many amazing people. Collaboration is better than the most meaningful conversations,” Slyvynsky wrote.
“Winter King” was initially published in Ukraine in 2018 by Old Lion Publishing and was later translated into English for a contemporary Ukrainian poetry series by American publisher Lost Horse Press (translation by Mark Andriy Chernetsky and Oksana Shuvalova). It includes texts from an earlier collection, “Adam and The Ball in the Darkness,” as well as new poems from 2013–2018.
“Winter King” gives us the chance to hear the author’s voice and, through the experience of an extraordinary text, to live through the scenes and landscapes offered by Slyvynsky in this time filled with turbulence and black noise,” Ingmāra Balode, one of the translators, wrote.
According to the author, the characters take center stage, each telling their unique story and expressing their experiences. “Of course, there is a piece of my ‘self’ in every poem. But the character allows me to be changeable, to seek different languages, different ways of speaking about the world,” Slyvynsky noted.
Special attention in “Winter King” is given to the figures of elderly people and children. “Childhood isn’t just about carefree happiness and joy. It is also quite an unpredictable and scary period, one that includes pain, shame, and anxiety. Old age is important to me as an accumulation of experience. When that experience of an older person intertwines with the experience of a child, the person becomes whole,” Slyvynsky said.
Ostap Slyvynsky is a Ukrainian poet, translator, and literary scholar. His works have been translated into more than fifteen languages, including English, German, Spanish, Galician, Belarusian, Polish, Serbian, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, and Swedish. He translates both fiction and scholarly literature from English, Polish, Belarusian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian.
RELATED: Translators of ‘The Winter King’ poetry collection by Ostap Slyvynsky received the AAUS Award
Collage: Chytomo
Copy editing: Joy Tataryn
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