Irpyn, a small town just outside Kyiv known for its House of Creativity belonging to the Writers’ Union of Ukraine, recently hosted its fourth working seminar titled Youth and the Spirit of Change. The schedule was very tight, including poetic soirees, improvised presentations, debates, round tables, meeting with noted literary figures, etc.
In today’s Ukrainian isolated information space where books printed in some regions seldom reach others (and the same is true of certain periodicals) seminars like the one at Irpyn are a welcome though rare phenomenon. I cannot remember another such intensive information exchange in the literary domain over a very long period.
Bohdan Zholdak, cutting an impressive figure, interviewed almost everybody for his radio program (for some reason always using his video camera, professionally choosing perfect angle shots).
Ivan Malkovych, an eccentric and irresistibly charming poet, cited his verse leaving everyone stunned by the realization that one can still hear such heartfelt tender words in this ruthless cynical world.
Oksana Zabuzhko, in her inimitably ironic and businesslike American style, with her new book Shevchenko’s Myth of Ukraine (which, like the previous one, has already become another scandalous bestseller).
Oleksandr Irvanets, the ever-smiling and virile treasurer of the Buh-Bah-Buh Literary Group, poet, playwright, translator, and as has suddenly transpired, a numismatist.
Taras Prokhasko who recognizes no epithets, because every epithet is restrictive, with his long-awaited book, Anna’s Other World, fresh off the presses (which I personally consider an important social phenomenon).
The unpredictable Serhiy Zhadan with his new poems and a second issue of the scandalous magazine Hygiene (the title struck a loud discordant note in Irpyn’s environs). Judging from its contents, scandals provoked as aesthetic phenomena are just starting with Kharkiv’s “anticulture” gaining momentum.
Tenderly graceful Mariana Slavka, winner of this year’s Smoloskyp Publishers Award, a virtuoso poetess, artist, actress, and an altogether captivating woman.
Marianna Kiyanovska, her colleague from the Tuha Poetry Group with her book of verse, Incarnation, (very good poetry and very underrated, this being another evidence that Ukraine’s literary criticism is very sporadic).
The enigmatic Roman Skyba known as a “poet living in a phone booth.” Perhaps because he had none in Irpyn he was surrounded by the fair sex all through the seminar.
Andriy Kokotiukha, an all-time manager who held the carnival-like and somewhat cranky show of the seminar firmly under control until the end (and did not mind having fun in the line of duty).
Excellent poets Ivan Tsyperdiuk and Lyubomyr Strynhaliuk from Ivano-Frankivsk (and I say excellent not because they are from Halychyna, like me, or because they helped me fight poor sanitation).
And, of course, a bevy of young people who read and like poetry, who came because they wanted to see the latest works and interact with authors. I do believe that they had an opportunity to partake of things pure, elevated, and everlasting, things that must be present in good literature.






