Iryna Shuvalova: Learning to Lose - A Conversation and a Poetry Reading

Recognized as one of the most distinct voices in contemporary Ukrainian poetry, Iryna Shuvalova joins Olena Martynyuk in conversation about memory and myth, loss and longing, war and defiance. From her joint perspective as a poet, translator, and scholar of Ukraine, Shuvalova will discuss the role of poetry in times of war, the experiences of Ukrainians outside Ukraine, and the power of myth-making in contemporary politics and culture. She will also read her poems which have been often described as spells or incantations.
Iryna Shuvalova is a poet, scholar, and translator from Kyiv, Ukraine. She is the author of five award-winning books of poetry, including Pray to the Empty Wells, available in English (Lost Horse Press, 2019). Her latest collection stoneorchardwoods (2020) was named poetry book of the year in Ukraine, and her new book endsongs is forthcoming in early 2024. Shuvalova’s work has been translated into 25 languages, appearing in Literary Hub, Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders, and others. As a translator, she produced Ukrainian renditions of poems by Ted Hughes, Louise Glück, and Alice Oswald. She has also translated into English Ukrainian modernist poetry, as well as the work of her contemporaries. Her English co-translation (with Vitaly Chernetsky) of Ostap Slyvynsky’s The Winter King is forthcoming in the fall of 2023. As a scholar of Ukraine, Shuvalova is particularly interested in how political imaginaries are produced through culture in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, with her current project scrutinizing the construction of symbolic ‘Russianness’ in the occupied Ukrainian territories. She holds a PhD in Slavonic Studies from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College. After living in the US, the UK, Greece and, most recently, in China, she is currently based in Oslo, Norway where she is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oslo.