Ali Kinsella has been translating from Ukrainian for nine years. Her published works include essays, poetry, monographs, and subtitles to various films. With Ostap Kin she translated Vasyl Lozynsky’s chapbook The Maidan After Hours (2017). She won the 2019 Kovaliv Fund Prize for her translation of Taras Prokhasko’s Anna’s Other Days. She holds an MA in Slavic studies from Columbia University, where she focused on Eastern European history and literature. A former Peace Corps volunteer, Ali lived in both Western and Central Ukraine for nearly five years. She now lives in Chicago, where she also sometimes works as a baker.
Judges’ Citation
These poems balance thought and emotion on the scales of linguistic music, beautifully captured in English by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky.
The lyrical voice of Natalka Bilotserkivets rings, strong and pure, through several generations of Ukrainian poetry, from the Soviet censorship and Chornobyl, to the joys and losses of post-independence. In Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow we get to witness a lifelong bewilderment that transforms the historical into the intimate, with tender and meticulous precision. These poems balance thought and emotion on the scales of linguistic music, beautifully captured in English by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky. Bilotserkivets is a poet capable of taking us from the 20th into the 21st century, through the darkness of old and new losses, with the strength refined into grace.
Selected poems
by Ali Kinsella
Life is simple and quiet,
and I love it.
Books surround me
like grass in the grove.
Like chamomile
to my lips,
soothing and green,
the word between words.
Copyright © 2022 Natalka Bilotserkivets, © 2022 Dzvinia Orlowsky and Ali Kinsella (Ukrainian translation) Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, Lost Horse Press
Untitled
the Ukrainian written by Natalka Bilotserkivets
- Griffin Trustee Sarah Howe interviews Ali Kinsella & Dzvinia Orlowsky
- “Swallows, “The Letter,” and “February” Kenyon Review
- “Passionate People,” “Technically Speaking,” and “Night Planes” periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics
- “Allergy” The New England Poetry Club
- “Bridge” and “Knife” Solstice Magazine
- Interview with Dzvinia Orlowsky and Ali Kinsella The Critical Flame
- “No Love Is Happiness” and “Stumbling Among the Stars” Midway Journal
- “August City Night” and “Love in Kyiv” Plume Magazine