28 Feb­ru­ary – the talk about Ukrain­ian cul­ture and lit­er­a­ture by Dr. Oksana Rozum­na and Dr. Han­na Yanovs­ka «How I grew up: from com­mu­nism to democ­ra­cy» at the Sea Point Pub­lic Library, Cape Town — 54 peo­ple attend­ed

Life sto­ries of a big Euro­pean coun­try – what are they like? How people’s lives changed with the cul­ture and lit­er­a­ture of Ukraine, being the cross­roads of East and West? The largest Ukrain­ian cities, as well as small­er towns or vil­lages, have their own par­tic­u­lar voice and pri­vate sto­ries. Cities Oster, Cherni­hiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv are impor­tant parts of the coun­try that grew up togeth­er with it and were chang­ing their appear­ance inside and out­side.

The coun­try’s grow­ing up from Com­mu­nism to Democ­ra­cy pro­duced spe­cial lit­er­a­ture. Vasyl Stus – the mas­ter of words, who had to become the voice of resis­tance. The poet nom­i­nat­ed for Nobel Prize. His life has par­al­lels with Nel­son Man­dela. [Lis­ten to: live voice of Vasyl Stus read­ing his poems; songs for his poems by Sis­ters Tel­nyuk].

Oksana Zabuzhko – the con­tem­po­rary writer that looks into decol­o­niza­tion of the body, rethink­ing lit­er­a­ture clas­sics and reopen­ing chal­leng­ing his­tor­i­cal ques­tions. [Lis­ten to: record­ings of poet­ry and some prose frag­ments read by O. Zabuzhko]

Ser­hiy Zhadan – low-class epos of con­tem­po­rary life in East­ern Ukraine. Roman­ti­cism and rev­o­lu­tion. Uni­ty of one’s poet­ry and life. Peo­ple as they are. [Lis­ten to: “Zhadan and Sobaky (Zhadan and Dogs)”] project.

Learn about the mod­ern African poet­ry project in Ukraine which was start­ed to years ago. The texts of four South African authors that were trans­lat­ed by the team of “I’ll Be Wait­ing for You under the Kaice-drat” project show that top­ics raised in the poems are equal­ly impor­tant for Ukraine and South Africa.

In this pre­sen­ta­tion you will learn insides that you will nev­er hear in the news or news­pa­pers – it’s an inside sto­ry about the young coun­try and its impor­tant peri­od of trans­for­ma­tions.

Speak­ers:

Dr. Oksana Rozum­na was born in 1975 in a Ukrain­ian town Oster. She lives and works in the cap­i­tal of Ukraine, Kyiv, study­ing cul­ture and cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy. She is the head of Cul­tur­al Pol­i­tics Depart­ment of Nation­al Insti­tute for Strate­gic Stud­ies. Oksana is the author of the idea and cura­tor of inter­na­tion­al Ukrain­ian-African lit­er­a­ture project “I’ll Be Wait­ing for You under the Kaice-drat”. The project includ­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of the first Ukrain­ian-African poet­ry anthol­o­gy fea­tur­ing four poets from South Africa in 2016. Under the name of Oksana Kut­senko she pub­lished three books of poet­ry “In the Win­ters of Desires»(1996), “Bal­let School”(2007), and Chrysalides” (2016). She has trans­lat­ed the poet­ry book by Léopold Sédar Sen­g­hor from French “Chants d’Om­bre”. Oksana is mar­ried and has two kids.

Dr. Han­na Yanovs­ka was born in 1980 in Kharkiv. Lin­guist by edu­ca­tion, she had been work­ing for some time as an Eng­lish teacher in Kharkiv Poly­tech­ni­cal uni­ver­si­ty. Is the author of book of poems and trans­la­tions “Fur­ry Book” (2008), elec­tron­ic “Poem of 1 Jan­u­ary” (2011). As a trans­la­tor, works with Eng­lish lan­guage poet­ry from var­i­ous parts of the world, such as African coun­tries, Aus­tralia, New Zealand. Now Han­na works as a free­lance trans­la­tor. Among the pub­lished trans­la­tions there is a num­ber of poet­ry books (by Albert Wendt, Seli­na Tusi­ta­la Marsh, Robert Sul­li­van and oth­ers) and nov­els (“Schindler’s Ark” by T. Keneal­ly, “The Col­lec­tor” by J. Fowles, “The Orphan Mas­ter’s Son” by A. John­son and oth­ers).

As an artist, cre­ates paper­cut pic­tures (vyty­nanky). She lives in Kharkiv with her lin­guist hus­band and a daugh­ter.