Book Release — Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters by Iya Kiva

HURI Books is pleased to announce the release of Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters by Iya Kiva. The collection is translated by Yuliya Ilchuk and Amelia Glaser, with an introduction by Amelia Glaser.

Through vivid imagery and powerful language, the collection weaves together reflections on the past with the lived realities of wartime. Available in print (paperback and hardcover), ebook, and online rental formats, the volume presents English translations alongside the original Ukrainian and Russian texts. It is the 15th volume in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature series.

About the Book

Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters presents a collection of poems by Ukrainian poet Iya Kiva, exploring memory, displacement, and present life in Ukraine. Drawing on her mixed Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish heritage, Kiva’s poetry helps define the cultural and linguistic diversity of modern Ukraine—a nation that has firmly asserted its identity and cultivated a rich, self-sufficient culture in the face of the brutal war launched by Russia. At once intimate and reflective, Kiva’s poems acknowledge the deep trauma of war while sustaining a quiet sense of resilience, love, and hope.

Born out of the pain and loss of a fragmented present, Iya Kiva’s poetry, collected in the original and in English translation in Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters, stitches memories of the past into Ukraine’s new reality. Since war broke out in her native Donetsk in 2014, she has become a prominent voice of Ukraine’s internally displaced citizens, finding new metaphors to express the ongoing uncertainties of this time. Kiva first began publishing in her native Russian, but, since the Donbas war, she has shifted to writing in Ukrainian. Her poems also reflect her mixed Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish background and contribute to defining contemporary Ukraine—a culturally and linguistically diverse sovereign country. As Ukraine struggles for its existence, Kiva offers lyric poems that acknowledge the deep trauma of war while radiating love and hope.

Through powerful metaphors and vivid imagery, the poet gives voice to experiences that verge on the unspeakable: what it means to have your home taken away forever and your childhood city destroyed and occupied; what it is like to live under constant air raids, uncertainty, and the fear of not even being alive in the next minute; how it feels to live in a war for 12 years; and what it means to defend democracy while Russia bombs homes, hospitals, and schools. 

While this bilingual collection was born of experiences of displacement and loss, it radiates optimism and unbreakable home that endures even in times of devastation. This poetry is not intended to bring comfort but to remind us of the necessity to follow the fundamental values of freedom and justice. 

About the Author

Iya Kiva is a poet, translator, and journalist from Donetsk, living in Lviv now. She began publishing poetry in her native Russian but shifted to Ukrainian after the outbreak of the Donbas war in 2014. Kiva is the author of two poetry collections, Further from Heaven (Podal´she ot raya, 2018) and The First Page of Winter (Persha storinka zymy, 2019), and has received numerous awards for her poetry and translations. Yuliya Ilchuk and Amelia Glaser’s translations of Kiva’s work have been featured widely in the media, including on LitHub and on NPR’s “The World.”

memory dries like grass in summer's garden

(air raids  alerts in most regions of Ukraine)

I turn the key in a broken lock
and the door to the past closes

somewhere in my inner east, space
grows over with danger weeds, somewhere and nowhere

a favorite childhood bogey-tale of falling in the slag heap 

(attention everyone to shelters)

what do you feel now
they ask in almost every interview

creaky krieg
throat cut with a bottle shank—shape of a Donbas rose
glass shards of a stolen youth in my hands and feet

these pretty metaphors are literature's crooked mirror

I can't remember
what I feel

(attention the air-raid alert is over)

and I'm trying to factor myself out of the parentheses

June 11, 2022