Wschodni Express inauguration | “Walka bez reguł” – meeting with poet Serhiy Zhadan

About

“Walka bez reguł” – meeting with poet Serhiy Zhadan and a new book launch. The event will feature: Serhiy Zhadan – author, Aleksandra Zińczuk – translator, Tomasz Sikora – moderator.

“Walka bez reguł” (fight without rules) is the latest bilingual poetry collection by Serhiy Zhadan, currently one of the most prominent voices in Ukrainian literature, as well as an artist and community leader. This author-curated selection brings together poems from various volumes, written between 1993 and 2020, alongside short pieces of poetic prose.

The book can be read as a hymn to the city of Kharkiv, but also, more broadly, as a celebration of the world itself. Zhadan’s writing is multisensory, overwhelming the senses with images of the sea, the steppe, and bustling city streets. Within this world resonate the voices of Ukrainian literary classics, mysterious nature, and railway tracks. Among its gallery of archetypes and characters, we encounter Jonah and Jesus, workers and smugglers, sinners and saints, lovers and rebellious youth.

The first reader of this collection before publication, the acclaimed Polish writer Andrzej Stasiuk – who, together with his wife Monika Sznajderman, introduced Zhadan’s prose to Polish readers through Czarne Publishing House – summed up the texts gathered in this volume with the words: “These poems are shockingly beautiful.”

This book was published as part of the Literary Eastern Express project, implemented with the support of the European Union under the Creative Europe programme.

Serhiy Zhadan (born in 1974 in Starobilsk) is one of the most prominent and versatile contemporary voices of Ukraine. A poet, novelist, essayist, translator, playwright, radio editor, community leader, and frontman of the bands Zhadan i Sobaky and Linia Mannerheima, he has received numerous prestigious awards and distinctions, including the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Literary Award, the Angelus Central European Literary Award, the Jerzy Giedroyc Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Hannah Arendt Prize, and the Medal of Freedom. He holds honorary doctorates from the Ukrainian Free University in Munich and the University of Wrocław. Zhadan was one of the organizers of the Euromaidan movement in Kharkiv. A wartime volunteer and a soldier of the National Guard of Ukraine, he serves in the Khartiia Brigade. He organizes humanitarian and medical aid campaigns and raises funds for vehicles for hospitals in embattled Kharkiv. His works have inspired multimedia music projects, theatrical productions, and feature films. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and seven of his novels have been published in Polish translation by Czarne. His poetry collections published in Poland include “Historia kultury początku stulecia”, “Drohobycz”, “Etiopia”, “Antena”, “Krzycz, ptaku”, and “Skrypnykówka”.

Aleksandra Zińczuk is a literary scholar, poet, essayist, social anthropologist, and translator. She is a cultural manager, Editor-in-Chief of the “Kultura Enter” magazine, and Managing Editor at the Workshops of Culture Publishing House. For her literary work and publishing initiatives, she has received numerous distinctions, including the Literatura na Świecie Award and the Hryhorii Skovoroda International Literary Prize. For many years, she has been actively involved in creating spaces for intercultural dialogue at the intersection of cultural heritage, history, art, and literature. Since the outbreak of the war, she has been engaged in providing support and assistance to Ukraine.

Tomasz Sikora is an artist and musician, and a co-founder of Karbido, a Polish experimental art collective. He is an active volunteer and a long-standing practitioner of Polish–Ukrainian dialogue. Since the beginning of the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has been continuously involved in organizing humanitarian and medical aid.

Details

When: June 28, Sunday, 16:00
Where: National Museum in Lublin – Gallery of 19th–20th Century Polish Painting
Admission free