ilyakaminsky.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

1/2 While Trump just stopped all help to Ukraine—Putin’s army attacked Odesa tonight. There are casualties and thousands are sitting without electricity or heat in freezing weather. This is happening right now.

submitted 9 hours ago • 2 comments

Good afternoon, sister, how is it In heaven? Quiet, yes? Without fear and night. We’re In the basement, talking Of you, sister. From a poem by Maryna, 14, written for a children's poetry project run by Ukrainian poet @ilyakaminsky.bsky.social. You can donate here poemsnotbombs.org #Ukraine

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Apropos of gestures wildly... I'm prouder than ever to be publishing this important work by Lesyk Panasiuk, who is actively deployed in Ukraine. This bilingual edition of Lesyk's poetry is translated by Katie Farris & @ilyakaminsky.bsky.social. 🇺🇦

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

1/4

submitted 3 days ago • 2 comments

1/3

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

While Trump is expressing his admiration for Putin—Putin’s army just bombed a children’s hospital in Odesa, Ukraine.

submitted 12 days ago • 2 comments

Friends & beloveds are worried abt what’s coming, from detentions to disruption of healthcare to denial of rights. Friends abroad are terrified too Know you are not alone. We are here for you—in any way we can Here is a link to a poem I go to when lost: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/...

submitted 44 days ago • 5 comments

In case this is of use for friends in Los Angeles area:

submitted 54 days ago • 1 comment

submitted 70 days ago • 5 comments

Overheard: A bookish 7 year old arrives in the town library and standing on his toes demands to check out the book called "Ibid." which, he says loudly, "is cited by all kinds of primary sources" and his little fist lands on the library counter in satisfaction.

submitted 70 days ago • 3 comments

Overheard: Tragedy of civilization is its inability to accept that at the end of the day, kindness is more important than justice. * Anna Swir tr by Milosz:

submitted 70 days ago • 2 comments

Maria Wisława Anna Szymborska would be 101 years young this year, and younger in spirit. It’s been a tough year, if you need a holiday break, here is a 10 day book club I did on her work— all free, courtesy of The Public Space: apublicspace.org/aps-together...

submitted 74 days ago • 2 comments

Sarabande will publish Katie’s and my translations of Lesyk’s powerful poems about life in Bucha, Ukraine during Russian invasion. It’s available for pre-order now on their website:

submitted 101 days ago • 4 comments

In the shape of a human body I am visiting the earth; The trees visit In shapes of trees. --Malena Morling

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

“and placed my grief in the mouth of language the only thing that would grieve with me” —Lisel Mueller

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

Since I thought I'd be dead by now everything I do is fucking perfect --Morgan Parker

submitted 77 days ago • 0 comments

There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen. ― Rumi

submitted 77 days ago • 0 comments

“children who guard doorless houses their fleeing parents took the holy picture with them leaving black mark of their prayers on the wall.” --Venus Khoury Ghata (tr. Marilyn Hacker)

submitted 77 days ago • 0 comments

Being on socials like X etc is standing in the middle of a crowd and hoping to get mugged only occasionally. But don’t we, as writers, always stand—as still as possible—in the middle of the crowd? B/c new words are bird in crowds. New rhythms. Somewhere between shouts: awe lurks, astonishment.

submitted 77 days ago • 2 comments

I saw you, and poems came back to me. --Yannis Ritsos

submitted 78 days ago • 8 comments

Friends in Boston, if you have a free evening and would like to hear some poems: I will be reading some new poems and translations of my own as well as honoring the memory of Jean Valentine and reading work from her New & Selected Poems: libcal.library.harvard.edu/event/13157377

submitted 83 days ago • 1 comment

Although Odesa, Ukraine was attacked multiple times this month & there are ongoing issues w/ electricity & heat—Poetry Studio for Kids continues its work —you can find more information at: www.poemsnotbombs.org

submitted 84 days ago • 1 comment

Breyten Breytenbach, who will be much missed: ‘History is a succession of things that ought never to have happened, and the writing act is a kind of revenge against it.’

submitted 97 days ago • 1 comment

1/2 It’s quite something to watch the USA industry lay off so many first rate editors and publishers during the past few years. At the same time, so many literary journals are allowed to die. SPD was allowed to go out of business without much of a helping hand to small presses.

submitted 98 days ago • 4 comments

Sarabande will publish Katie’s and my translations of Lesyk’s powerful poems about life in Bucha, Ukraine during Russian invasion. It’s available for pre-order now on their website:

submitted 101 days ago • 4 comments

Nothing persuades me that “in image of God” applies only to humans. I sense mountains, rivers, trees, lakes, animals, are far closer to essence of God than humans -Jung * “breathless, go to Lvov, after all it exists, quiet and pure as a peach. It is everywhere. -Zagajewski

submitted 102 days ago • 1 comment

1/2 Baudelaire: "It is much easier to declare that everything in the garments of a period is absolutely ugly than to apply oneself to the extraction of the mysterious beauty which they contain.”

submitted 103 days ago • 2 comments

Although you won’t hear of it in the news, Russia bombed Odesa, Ukraine again last night. Multiple dead and wounded:

submitted 105 days ago • 1 comment

“Another air raid alert As if they are walking the whole country to the execution But shoot just one of us” --Victoria Amelina, Ukrainian poet who died from wounds inflicted by the Russian bombardment

submitted 112 days ago • 0 comments

To be a poet is to have a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. ― George Eliot, Middlemarch

submitted 112 days ago • 0 comments

"If you are, as I am, a nomad, draw a border around me: make me your country." --Abdulla Pashew Tr fr Kurdish by Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse

submitted 112 days ago • 0 comments

Here is a little essay about reading Dante in Ukraine: marshhawkpress.org/ilya-kaminsk...

submitted 113 days ago • 0 comments

Bombardment of civilians is a war crime—it is happening right now in Sudan, Syria, Gaza. But I keep posting about Odesa, Ukraine because that’s where my family is and where I go twice a year. Here is a story from Odesa, and new translations: plumepoetry.com/odesa-poets-...

submitted 113 days ago • 0 comments

“A poet is a nightingale who sits in the darkness, and sings” —Shelley, in Defense of Poetry * "In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing About the dark times." —Bertolt Brecht

submitted 113 days ago • 3 comments

Poetry binds solitudes. It enacts a central human paradox: we exist as singular selves, yet can only know them through our relations. A poem creates a presence that's so physically, emotionally & intellectually charged that we encounter ourselves in our response to it -Emily Warn

submitted 113 days ago • 1 comment

"I know that each one of us travels to love alone, Alone to faith and to death. I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help. Let me come with you." --Yanis Ritsos tr. P. Green & B. Bardsley

submitted 113 days ago • 0 comments

the leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is god i agree with the leaves — Lucille Clifton

submitted 113 days ago • 0 comments

Odesa, Ukraine is being bombed right now. At this moment, with war crimes against civilians happening in Sudan, Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere—I write about Odesa because that’s where my family lives. This is happening right now:

submitted 115 days ago • 3 comments

History = a series of endless cataclysms Poetry = in the middle of all this a human voice is trying to sing

submitted 115 days ago • 0 comments