A New Orthography by Serhiy Zhadan is the 5th volume in Lost Horse Press’s Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series. In these poems, the poet focuses on daily life during the Russian-Ukrainian war, rendering intimate portraits of the country’s residents as they respond to crisis. Zhadan revives and revises the role of the nineteenth-century Romantic bard, one who portrays his community with clarity, preserving its most precious aspects and darkest nuances. The poems investigate questions of home, exile, solitude, love, and religious faith, making vivid the experiences of noncombatants, refugees, soldiers, and veterans. Zhadan observes and mirrors the shifts within a country during wartime and offers solace as well.
John Hennessy is the author of two poetry collections, Bridge and Tunnel and Coney Island Pilgrims. He is the co-translator, with Ostap Kin, of A New Orthography, selected poems by Serhiy Zhadan (finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, 2021, and co-winner of the Derek Walcott Prize, 2021) and the anthology Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (forthcoming, Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature/HUP). Hennessy teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and serves as poetry editor for The Common.
Ostap Kin is the editor and co-translator, with John Hennessy, of Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (forthcoming from Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute), the editor of New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City, and the co-translator, with John Hennessy, of Serhiy Zhadan's A New Orthography. He also co-translated, with Vitaly Chernetsky, Yuri Andrukhovych’s Songs for a Dead Rooster.