# Book Release: The Voices of Babyn Yar July 19, 2022 - [ News ](/news-categories/news) [](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/voices-babyn-yar) ![The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/huri/files/kiyanovska-mockup-front-450.jpg?itok=YiqXoM8l) HURI is pleased to announce the release of *[The Voices of Babyn Yar](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/voices-babyn-yar)*, a poignant collection of poetry by award-winning poet Marianna Kiyanovska. The poems are translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky, with an introduction by Polina Barskova. Available in hardcover and paperpack, this collection presents the English translation alongside the original Ukrainian. *The Voices of Babyn Yar* is the latest publication in the [Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature](/news/huri-launches-new-publications-series-harvard-library-ukrainian-literature) series. Sort [HARDCOVER](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674268760) $39.95 ISBN 9780674268760 160 pages 4 illustrations [PAPERBACK](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674268869) $16.00 ISBN 9780674268869 160 pages 4 illustrations [Order your copy](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/results-list.php?search=kiyanovska&submit=Search) ![The Voices of Babyn Yar cover and open book](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/huri/files/book_top_view-a.jpg) ## Book Description With *The Voices of Babyn Yar*—a collection of stirring poems by **Marianna Kiyanovska**—the award-winning Ukrainian poet honors the victims of the Holocaust by writing their stories of horror, death, and survival by projecting their own imagined voices. Artful and carefully intoned, the poems convey the experiences of ordinary civilians going through unbearable events leading to the massacre at Kyiv’s Babyn Yar from a first-person perspective to an effect that is simultaneously immersive and estranging. While conceived as a tribute to the fallen, the book raises difficult questions about memory, responsibility, and commemoration of those who had witnessed an evil that verges on the unspeakable. [Explore the book](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/voices-babyn-yar) ## Table of Contents *(Note: Read the linked poems in the list below in open access online.)* Acknowledgments Introduction: Writing the Disaster in Tongues: Marianna Kiyanovska’s Voices of Babyn Yar \[Polina Barskova\] Preface: Voices from the Edge: Translation, Memory, and Mourning \[Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky\] **The Voices of Babyn Yar** [eyes filled with tears so dense they won’t flow](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/chapters/152) [only now can I speak of this](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/chapters/155) [I hold a bullet under my tongue](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/chapters/157) [I would collapse in the street right here](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/chapters/159) [hundreds of streets could fill this vastness](https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/chapters/161) I’m nearing, nearing, near the mundane has vanished I won’t save a soul Africa Africa I fed my cat with saliva happiness is present and eternal if I survive I’ll simply be a tato at the train station two found rest I really don’t know if I’m afraid rebbe Leivi Yitzhak Shneyerson I’m here I’m he I get up off my knees this war—so long I nearly grew up these last parting moments should they be forgotten there was terror yet tears are not a solace in order to bear witness I need not survive this yar is like the world Jews with suitcases large awkward bags the future will hold me no more tonight in the twilight to the yar call those with guns and yet I will utter it the window’s gaping open, glass panes gone in the room there hung I don’t know if it’s possible to cry achingly carefully my bedridden mother begged me throat felt terribly sore today I’ll lie just as I fell these streets lie in ruins rebbe taught nobody’s immortal world has started to stink sun-drenched days under occupation this morning I studied the mirror midnight coughing so hard it makes the walls shake I’m putting together a collection in these final weeks I tripped and fell Abraham said there may be hope yet now all of this, I say, let it be over once I danced was a dancer in a ballet maybe sweet-tasting poison slow-flowing we’re like fish, pike and perch our neighbors came by they say we must stay together what has changed: there are rats in abundance weeping I walk turning around looking back I weep the before means that tato is home with a smile on his face it seems to me I’m deafeningly silent dog at the door, I didn’t know how to speak to it I thought it surely couldn’t get any worse all happening at once: the bullets and the apples this ultimate naming of things that I now attempt we used to go fishing, me and the boys we shall not make history we are the nobodies tears turn into crystalline grus old age creeps up when I read the news my clothing fits loosely haven’t had any food for days we used to come here to build a bonfire up to this day I lived like anyone this is the yar where Hans does his work this is the poem with which I scream Notes ![The Voices of Babyn Yar back cover and open book](/sites/g/files/omnuum4931/files/huri/files/book_top_view-b.jpg) ## About the Author Marianna Kiyanvska is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, translator, literary scholar, and public figure whose works have been translated into eighteen languages. She is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and literary translation. A winner of the Vilenica International Literary Festival and the CEI Fellowship (2007), she was also awarded the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture in Poland (2013). In 2020, she was recognized with the prestigious Taras Shevchenko Prize for *The Voices of Babyn Yar*. Publication of this book has been made possible by the Ukrainian Research Institute Fund and the [generous support](/give) of publications in Ukrainian studies at Harvard University by the following benefactors: - Ostap and Ursula Balaban - Jaroslaw and Olha Duzey - Vladimir Jurkowsky - Myroslav and Irene Koltunik - Damian Korduba Family - Peter and Emily Kulyk - Irena Lubchak - Dr. Evhen Omelsky - Eugene and Nila Steckiw - Dr. Omeljan and Iryna Wolynec - Wasyl and Natalia Yerega Preparation of this translation was supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a translation grant from the Peterson Literary Fund at BCU Foundation (Toronto, Canada). The Peterson Literary Fund recognizes the best books that promote a better understanding of Ukraine or the Ukrainian people, or whose subject matter is relevant to a global Ukrainian audience. See also:- [ HURI publications ](/tags/huri-publications) - [ Poetry ](/tags/poetry) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)