A MART脥NEZ, HOST:
One of Ukraine's most celebrated poets is touring the United States. NPR's Neda Ulaby spoke with her.
NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Marianna Kiyanovska lives in Ukraine, but she's reading her poetry at more than a dozen U.S. universities this month.
MARIANNA KIYANOVSKA: (Through interpreter) I started my trip in Yale, then I went to Annapolis.
ULABY: Kiyanovska and translator Ali Kinsella spoke from Chicago. Kiyanovska is reading from her latest poetry collection called "The Voices Of Babyn Yar."
KIYANOVSKA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
ULABY: Babyn Yar is the site of one of the largest massacres of Jewish civilians by Nazis during World War II. In 1941, over just two days, more than 30,000 Jews were lined up and murdered there. Babyn Yar is a wide ravine near the capital of Kyiv. Kiyanovska wrote poems from the perspective of victims, soldiers and the very few survivors.
KIYANOVSKA: (Through interpreter) I cried out non-humanly, stopped myself, bit my tongue. And now I will utter it. Presence is always twofold. We're center-drilled beads. A bullet goes in and out, not one set apart - we're all of us strung together. Sun reaches its zenith as if it had risen up to witness us from above, and how we're dying here.
ULABY: Poet Marianna Kiyanovska.
KIYANOVSKA: (Through interpreter) I'm not Jewish, and as far as I know, I don't have any Jewish origins for at least a few generations back.
ULABY: But Kiyanovska says she lives with these voices. They share the same space. She has no choice but to hear them. It is a poet's job to listen.
KIYANOVSKA: (Through interpreter) I also would like to point out that I think all wars are pretty similar to each other.
ULABY: Today's war in Ukraine has much in common with every other war, she says. And the victims, she says, all of them are our own.
Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
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