Ryan Hardy; Andrew Janco; Olga Livshin; Asher Maria; Kevin M. F. Platt
on translating Ekaterina Derysheva
Our practice involved group collaboration between the five translators and the poet Kateryna Derysheva. We each chose initial translations to draft for the poems and then met to collectively finalize them alongside Kateryna. This process involved having Kateryna read the original poems in Russian and providing invaluable commentary on her word choice and intended images. Translators are listed in alphabetical order to reflect the collective nature of our work.
Kateryna Derisheva’s current poetic work is a form of research practice, oriented at once towards the poet’s own position in language, and towards the languages that surround her: everyday, technical, professional, etc. One may take, for example, her poem “[lake icing over]” (“[замерзающее озеро]). In Kateryna’s account of work on this poem, it began with contemplation of “a metaphor that was chasing me— the image of a lake as the cornea of an eye” as well as the image of “a tree growing out of the pupil.” She proceeded with consultation of specialized writing on biology and of dictionaries. Associations with surveillance cameras and retractable lenses followed. Work continued through a series of additional ruminations on what the lake-cornea sees or does not see—snow, or a peculiar negative, reversed snow. Finally, work on the poem led to an additional set of associations relating to the process of recording an image on a bitmap. The end result is a chain of signification, linked together by grammar and a logic that is less that of a dream and closer to that of a poetic “dictionary of collocation”—an experimental exploration of the linguistically possible at the intersection of polyvocal linguistic practices.
about the author
Katerina Derysheva is poet in residence and at-risk scholar at the University of Pennsylvania during the spring semester of 2024, affiliated with the Department of Russian and East European Studies and the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. Derysheva is a Ukrainian poet from Kharkiv. She is co-founder and organizer of the kntxt literary project. Her poems and translations have been published in the journals: Plume, Zerkalo, Tlen Literacki, Literatur in Bayern, Literaturportal Bayern, Visions, Volga, SoFloPoJo, The Colon, Literature, Articulation, New Coast, Arion, Homo legens, Kreshchatik, and others. She is the author of the books Starting Point (2018), There Will Be No Installation (2023); co-author of the book Earth Time (Romania, 2020). Her poems appeared in the anthology In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Carolyn Forche. She was long-listed for the Arkadiy Dragomoshchenko Prize (2019) and is laureate of the Europa Mai Prize (2022). Her poems and essays have been translated into 11 languages. She has held fellowships and residencies at Villa Concordia (Bamberg), LCB (Berlin), Next Page Foundation (Sofia), “La Factorie” (Normandy, 2023), Lübeck Gedok (2023), and Villa Sarkia (Sysmä, Finland, 2023).
about the translators
Ryan Hardy is a translator, language educator, student organizer, and recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he focused on Russian and Eastern European Studies. He has held various writing and editing positions for the School of Russian and Asian Studies, Pomona College’s Vestnik, and DoubleSpeak Magazine. Ryan’s research interests lie at the intersections of historical memory, identity-based conflict, and countercultural movements in Central/Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Most recently, Ryan’s work has focused on collective memory of the Czechoslovak-founded Interhelpo labor cooperative in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Ryan translates across genres, ranging from poetry and prose to memoir and articles from Russian civil society.
Andrew Janco’s translations are published in The New York Times, Ploughshares, and other journals, and are included in the anthology Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. With Olga Livshin, he is the co-translator of A Man Only Needs a Room, a volume of Vladimir Gandelsman's poetry (2022), and Today Is a Different War by Lyudmyla Khersonska (2023).
Olga Livshin grew up in Ukraine and Russia, and came to the US as a teenager. Her poetry, essays, translations and interviews appear in the New York Times, Ploughshares, The Rumpus, the Kenyon Review, and other journals. She is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman (Poets & Traitors Press, 2019). Livshin co-translated Today is a Different War by the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and A Man Only Needs a Room by the Russian-American poet Vladimir Gandelsman (New Meridian Arts, 2022). As a Consulting Poetry Editor for Mukoli: A Journal for Peace, she reviews poetry from marginalized, conflict-affected communities and collectives across the world. She holds a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and in Literatures and taught at the university level for over a decade before focusing on teaching and practicing creative writing.
Asher Maria (he/they) is a first-year Ph.D. student in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory and 2023-2024 Vartan Gregorian Humanities Graduate Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. As a comparativist, Asher is primarily interested in decolonial research at the intersection of Baltic, Lusophone, and Slavic studies. His planned dissertation looks at how the literature of Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian migrants in Brazil reflects these communities’ role in the development of Brazilian national identity. They also have a background in translating from Lithuanian and Russian.
Kevin M. F. Platt is a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and graduate chair of the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. His scholarly work focuses on Russian and East European poetry, culture, and history. His translations of Russophone and Latvian poetry have appeared in World Literature Today, Jacket2, Fence, and other journals. He is the author or editor of several scholarly books, the most recent of which is Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians Between World Orders (2024). He has contributed to a number of volumes of poetry in translation, including Hit Parade: The Orbita Group (2015), for which he served as lead translator and editor. He also has organized the intermittent Russophone poetry translation symposium Your Language My Ear at the University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere.
photo by Ryan Hardy
