Synopsis
I understand that Ihor Pavlyuk is from Polissya. The name of this region sounds magical to my ear. I have never visited such a place as Polissya... I think that Ihor Pavlyuk is a good poet and in his heart he resembles the unique natural spirit of his birthplace. My first impression from these English translations of Ihor Pavlyuk’s poems was that I was reading Seamus Heaney’s book. I am grateful to Ihor Pavlyuk for the energy of true humanity which I found in his poems. I know that a nebulous terrain exists in the hearts and minds of every person, a terrain that cannot be adequately characterized in simple terms of right and wrong or good and bad. I see this ambiguity in Ihor Pavlyuk’s works and I am happy in the knowledge that there is a very good poet in Ukraine.
Mo Yan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012
Ihor Pavlyuk's poems have been sensitively rendered into English. The subtle music of Stephen Komarnykyj's translations echoes the delicacy and depth of the poet's visions, where despair is always infused with tenderness and personal desires drink from the well of collective dreams.
Naomi Foyle, British poet
Although Pavlyuk writes in his own highly original style, the fierce humanity of his poems reminded me of Seamus Heaney. There is also a sense as in Heaney of how intrinsically linked the present is with the past our language and our landscape scattered with pagan remnants which live inside each of us. However Pavlyuk's pagans are very much alive and dwell in the primal landscape of Polissya with its impenetrable forests and marshes.
What is it that is unique about Pavlyuk’s work and about Ukrainian literature? Why should any English language reader who picks up this book bother to turn the pages? There is, of course, a moral argument, a national literature which has been sundered from the mainstream of Europe is being returned to its rightful place. However, many people might feel that there is a ‘Slavic’ quality to this literature which has been adequately conveyed by Akhmetova, Chekhov etc., but in this they would be mistaken. Pavlyuk’s poetic world, the inter¬nal cosmos he created in exile in St. Petersburg, has resulted in a rare example of a subjective, confessional poetry in a Slavic language. Equally, the traditions on which he draws, in particular the modern baroque of the authors of the Executed Renaissance, are almost unknown in the English speaking world and have qualities which could influence and enrich English poetry. As we have also seen, Pavlyuk is an emissary from a forgotten pagan Europe of open pastures where the horses of Makhno’s anarchists roam. There was, of course, much that was wrong with that world, but equally, our estrangement from the lives once lived in the fields outside our cities has impoverished us. Pavlyuk’s voice is the voice of these nowun-peopled fields. I invite you to sit with us and converse with anolder forgotten Europe whose vestiges linger in the names given to the days of the week and the outlines of iron age forts glimpsed from the air.
Steve Komarnyckyj, translator
But through the power of his rhythms and images, Pavlyuk has the capability of adjusting the reality of the ‘Imperial’ Russophone world into something that more resembles an East Slavic world, one that shares its riches with its immediate neighbours. The fact that I might be on hand as a translator of this workmanship of genius into an understandable and accessible English language.
Thom Moore, Irish poet, bard
READ MORE REVIEWS ABOUT THE BOOK BY IHOR PAVLYUK «A FLIGHT OVER THE BLACK SEA»:
http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/Stride%20mag%202014/sept2014/Hart.Tukka.htm
http://dura-dundee.org.uk/author/glow/
About the Author
Ihor Pavlyuk (sometimes spelled as Ihor Pawlyuk, Igor Pavlyk, Igor Pavluk; Ukrainian: І́гор Зино́війович Павлю́к) is a Ukrainian writer, translator and research worker. He was born in the Volyn region on January 1, 1967. His mother died in ten days after giving birth to him and he was raised at home of his grandfather and grandmother on his mother's side -migrants from Helm region. He is a Winner of a 2013 English PEN Award and a Doctor of Social Communication. Ihor Pavlyuk is a member of the European Society of Authors. He studied at the Saint Petersburg military engineering-technical university, which he left in order to pursue his career as a writer. He was, as a result, sentenced to a period of hard labour in the Taiga (Transbaikal region of the Soviet Union). In 1992 Ihor Pavlyuk graduated from the Department of Journalism at Lviv University and worked as the correspondent of religious press and radio in Lviv. He has participated in various international literary festivals. Now Ihor Pavlyuk is Leading Researcher of Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, professor of Ukrainian media at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. He has participated in various international literary festivals, including Estonia, Georgia, Russia, Belarus, Germany, Italy, the United States of America, Poland, Turkey, Ireland, Pakistan, England, Czech Republic and international editions about Ukrainians from Volyn region, Ukrainian writers and poets. Works of Ihor Pavlyuk have been translated into Russian, Belarusian, Polish, English, French, Latvian, Bulgarian, Japanese and other languages and published in such magazines as The Apple Valley Review (Volume 7, Number 2 (Fall 2012), Muddy River Poetry Review, Asymptote, Gold Dust (Issue 23), The Adirondack Review, The Recusant, Metamorphoses, Eurasia Review, The world poets quarterly and many others. Ihor Pavlyuk is the protagonist of the film Between Bug and God and film Voice. American actors read poems by Ihor Pavlyuk. The book of Ihor Pavlyuk A Flight over the Black Sea became the winning book within Writers in Translation competition by English PEN club. Ihor Pavlyuk is married. His wife Lyudmyla Pavlyuk is Associate Professor at Department of Journalism, Lviv University. Nadiya and Olesya are their daughters. Read more here: https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Pavlyuk
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