Lyuba Yakimchuk
Ukrainian poet, playwright, screenwriter, and performer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lyuba Yakimchuk (Ukrainian: Любов Якимчук; born 1985) is a Ukrainian poet, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and performer. Her poetry collection Apricots of Donbas, first published in Ukrainian in 2015 and in a bilingual English edition in 2021, addresses family memory, displacement, and the effects of the Russo-Ukrainian War on language and everyday life.[1][2]
Lyuba Yakimchuk | |
|---|---|
Любов Якимчук | |
Yakimchuk in 2025 | |
| Born | 1985 (age 40–41) Pervomaisk, Luhansk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Education | Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University; National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy |
| Occupations | Poet, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, performer |
| Writing career | |
| Language | Ukrainian |
| Notable works | Apricots of Donbas; Slovo House. Unfinished Novel |
Yakimchuk co-wrote the documentary Slovo House (2017) and the feature film Slovo House. Unfinished Novel with director Taras Tomenko. In 2025, she and Tomenko received the Golden Dzyga, Ukraine's national film award presented by the Ukrainian Film Academy, for best screenplay for the feature film.[3]
In April 2022, she recited her poem "Prayer" in English during John Legend's performance of "Free" at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.[4][5]
Early life and education
Yakimchuk was born and raised in Pervomaisk, Luhansk Oblast, a coal-mining city in eastern Ukraine.[6][7] She studied Ukrainian philology at Luhansk Taras Shevchenko National University and later completed a master's program in literary theory, literary history, and comparative literature at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.[8]
After moving to Kyiv, Yakimchuk was visiting Pervomaisk in 2014 when the city was seized by Russian forces during the War in Donbas (2014–2022). Her family was subsequently displaced from the city in 2015.[9][10][11]
Following the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Yakimchuk remained in Kyiv, where she volunteered and wrote about life in the city during the opening weeks of the war. Her accounts included "Letter from Kyiv: to keep from weeping, we start cursing" for the New Statesman [12] From late March she began travelling abroad for literary and cultural events, including appearances in Europe and the United States.[9] After the withdrawal of Russian forces from Kyiv Oblast, she returned to Kyiv, where she continues to live.[13]
The region and the experience of displacement became recurring subjects in her poetry and prose.[11][1]
Career
Poetry and prose
Yakimchuk published her first full-length poetry collection, , yak MODA (approximately, Like Fashion), in 2009. Literary scholar Yurii Sadlovsky later cited the book as an example of the continuation of Futurist techniques in contemporary Ukrainian poetry.[14]
Her second collection, Apricots of Donbas, was published by Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva Publishing in 2015.[15] It combines poems written before and after the beginning of the war in 2014. The collection draws on family history, the mining culture of Donbas, displacement, and the disruption of ordinary life.[2][11] A revised and expanded Ukrainian edition appeared in 2023.[16]
A bilingual Ukrainian–English edition, translated by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Svetlana Lavochkina, was published by Lost Horse Press in 2021.[17] The English edition includes Yakimchuk's essay "Reaching a Common Language" and an introduction by Maksymchuk and Rosochinsky.[1] Her poetry had previously appeared in the English-language anthologies Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine (2017), The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets (2018), and The White Chalk of Days: The Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Anthology (2018).[18]
Reviewers have discussed Apricots of Donbas in the context of literature responding to the Russo-Ukrainian War. Layla Benitez-James, writing for the Poetry Foundation, examined Yakimchuk's use of fractured words and place names to convey violence and the dissolution of bodies and identities.[1] Elizabeth B. Jones similarly discussed the collection's combination of linguistic disruption, homesickness, humor, and attention to everyday life.[2] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Maria G. Rewakowicz compared Yakimchuk's representation of Donbas with that of Serhiy Zhadan, describing both writers as trusted representatives of the region beyond it.[6] Gabriella Reznowski reviewed the collection in the academic journal Slavic & East European Information Resources.[19] Scholar Yulia Kazanova analysed the poem sequence "Decomposition" as an example of wartime poetry in which the destruction of eastern Ukrainian place names coincides with the disintegration of personal identity.[20]
The French audiobook of Les Abricots du Donbas was released in 2024, with Catherine Deneuve reading the French translations and Yakimchuk reading several poems in Ukrainian.[21]
Yakimchuk has also published essays and documentary prose about occupation, displacement, and language. During the first weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion, the New Statesman published her "Letter from Kyiv: to keep from weeping, we start cursing", which described wartime life and changes in everyday language.[22] Her radio essay "Ruination of Cities & Words" was broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in April 2022.[23]
Yakimchuk contributed short prose texts to photographer Mark Neville's 2022 book Ukraine: Stop Tanks with Books.[24][25] In 2023, the
French journal Kometa published her four-part essay "Un soldat russe dort dans ma maison". Reviewing the journal in Le Monde, Nicolas Truong highlighted Yakimchuk's account of forced departure and fear of Russian military occupation.[26] In 2024, L'Obs published her essay "La langue ukrainienne est devenue notre maison, notre seul refuge", about her relationship to the Ukrainian language during the war.[27]
Cultural projects
In 2012, Yakimchuk and poet Oleh Kotsarev initiated "The Year of Semenko", a series of events devoted to Ukrainian Futurist poet Mykhail Semenko.[28]
Beginning in late 2015, Yakimchuk and cultural manager Halyna Tanay organized "Metro to Kybyntsi", a cultural project in Kybyntsi, the village where Semenko was born. It began by distributing postcards containing Semenko's poetry to local residents and developed into a series of events and a Futurist festival held in August 2016.[29][30] The project also initiated a literary-tourist route and a Futurist pavilion dedicated to Semenko, which was built as a venue for cultural events.[31][32]
Film and theater
Yakimchuk and Tomenko wrote the screenplay for the 2017 documentary Slovo House, about the writers who lived in Kharkiv's Slovo Building and the destruction of the Ukrainian cultural generation later known as the Executed Renaissance. The film competed at the 2017 Warsaw Film Festival and received the 2018 Golden Dzyga for best documentary film.[33]
The pair later co-wrote the feature film Slovo House. Unfinished Novel, which combines historical figures and events with fictional characters. It premiered at the 2021 Warsaw Film Festival and was released theatrically in Ukraine in May 2024.[34][35] At the 2025 Golden Dzyga awards, the film won best film and Yakimchuk and Tomenko received the award for best screenplay.[3]
Yakimchuk's play The Wall, created with Swiss director Thomas Mettler, was staged at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kyiv in 2019.[36] She later wrote Schrödinger's Cat through the Institute for Human Sciences' Documenting Ukraine program. The play concerns an encounter between a Ukrainian woman and a Russian soldier in a basement in Bucha.[37] Texts by Yakimchuk were also used in Mettler's film Some Men Must Die (2023), which developed from a physical-theater production about the war in Donbas.[38]
Music and performance
Yakimchuk began collaborating with jazz double bassist Mark Tokar in 2009. Their poetry-and-music programs combined her readings and vocal experimentation with Tokar's improvised music. In 2015, they released a recording based on Apricots of Donbas and the sequence "Decomposition".[39]
In 2014, poems by Yakimchuk and Serhiy Zhadan provided the literary basis for Mariana Sadovska and Tokar's music project 2014, written for four female voices and four double basses.[40] Yakimchuk later performed vocals on Fokstroty: Zhadan/Hurzhy, a 2021 album and stage project drawing on recordings and texts by Ukrainian Futurist writers.[41]
On 3 April 2022, during a Grammy Awards segment following a recorded address by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Yakimchuk recited "Prayer" in English as part of Legend's performance of "Free". The performance also included singer Mika Newton and bandura player Siuzanna Iglidan.[4][5]
Later in 2022, Yakimchuk was a writer and performer on Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate, a project with Yuriy Gurzhy, Irena Karpa, and Hryhoriy Semenchuk that premiered at the Cheltenham Literature Festival.[42][43]
In 2023, she and Irish poet Mary Branley wrote and narrated Freedom Letters, a music-theater work by composer Olesya Zdorovetska that imagined a correspondence between Ukrainian writer Valeria O'Connor-Vilinska and Irish revolutionary Constance Markievicz.[44]
International activities
The international circulation of Yakimchuk's work began with translations and literary contacts in Poland. In 2010, she received a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage's Gaude Polonia programme.[45] Her poetry was subsequently translated into Polish by Aneta Kamińska. A Polish edition of Apricots of Donbas, titled Morele Donbasu, was published in 2018, followed in 2023 by the bilingual Ukrainian–Polish collection Produkcja czułości / Виробництво ніжності.[46][47]
The publication of the bilingual Ukrainian–English edition of Apricots of Donbas by Lost Horse Press in 2021 broadened the international reception of her poetry.[17] The collection was reviewed by the Poetry Foundation, Los Angeles Review of Books, EuropeNow, and the academic journal Slavic & East European Information Resources.[1][6][2][48] These publications discussed her use of fragmented words and place names to represent the destruction of cities, bodies, and personal identity during the Russo-Ukrainian War.[1][2] In 2022, The New York Times included Yakimchuk among the Ukrainian writers whose work was being translated for English-language readers following the Russian invasion.[49]
Yakimchuk has presented her work at universities and research institutions in Europe and North America. In 2016, she gave readings devoted to her poem sequence "Decomposition" at the Ukrainian Institute of America and Columbia University in New York and at the University of Toronto.[50][51] She returned to Columbia's Harriman Institute in 2022 and gave the Palij Lecture at the University of Kansas that year.[52][53] Later appearances included readings and discussions at UCLA and the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute in 2024, and another event at the University of Toronto in 2026.[54][55][56] These events combined poetry readings with discussions of Donbas, the effects of war on language, Ukrainian cultural identity, and Russian cultural imperialism.[57]
The international presentation of Yakimchuk's work has also extended beyond printed poetry and academic events. At the 64th Annual Grammy Awards in 2022, she read her poem "Prayer" in English during John Legend's performance of "Free".[58] The music-and-poetry album Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate, to which she contributed as a writer and performer, premiered at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in the United Kingdom. She also co-wrote, with Irish poet Mary Branley, the libretto for composer Olesya Zdorovetska's Freedom Letters, first performed in Ireland in 2023. A French audiobook of Les Abricots du Donbas was released in 2024, with Catherine Deneuve reading the French translations and Yakimchuk reading several poems in Ukrainian.[59]
In 2024, Yakimchuk participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where her activities included readings, discussions, and contributions to the programme's international literary events.[60][61]
In 2025, she was appointed poet in residence by Poetry International in Rotterdam and appeared at the organisation's annual festival.[62]
Institutional activities
In 2025, Yakimchuk served on the international jury of the 54th Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival.[63] In 2026 the President of Ukaine appointed her as a member of the Committee for the Shevchenko National Prize.[64]
Selected awards and distinctions
Yakimchuk has received recognition for her poetry and screenwriting, while translated editions and works to which she contributed have also been distinguished by literary and film institutions.
- 2017 — The Kovalev Foundation International Poetry Prize, awarded in New York, for Apricots of Donbas.[65]
- 2018 — Slovo House, co-written by Yakimchuk and Taras Tomenko, received the Golden Dzyga, Ukraine's national film award presented by the Ukrainian Film Academy, for best documentary film.[66]
- 2024 — The French edition of Apricots of Donbas, translated by Iryna Dmytrychyn and Agathe Bonin, was included in the first selection for the international Prix Mallarmé étranger.[67]
- 2025 — Yakimchuk and Tomenko received the Golden Dzyga for best screenplay for Slovo House. Unfinished Novel; the film also received the award for best film.[68]
- 2026 — The Latvian edition of Apricots of Donbas, Donbasa aprikozes, translated by Ingmāra Balode, Māra Poļakova, and Māris Salējs, was nominated for the Latvian Literature Award in the category of poetry translation into Latvian.[69]
Selected works
Poetry books
- , як МОДА (transliterated , yak MODA; approximately Like Fashion). Lviv: Kamenyar, 2009. ISBN 9789666070688. In Ukrainian.
- Абрикоси Донбасу (Apricots of Donbas). Lviv: Old Lion Publishing, 2015. ISBN 9786176791355. Revised and expanded edition, 2023. In Ukrainian.[15][16]
- Apricots of Donbas. Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Svetlana Lavochkina. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2021. ISBN 9781736432310. Bilingual Ukrainian–English edition.[17]
- Produkcja czułości / Виробництво ніжності. Translated by Aneta Kamińska. Sejny: Pogranicze, 2023. Bilingual Ukrainian–Polish edition.[70]
Translations of Apricots of Donbas
- Morele Donbasu. Translated by Aneta Kamińska. Poznań and Bydgoszcz, 2018. Polish.[71]
- Donbassi aprikoosid ja teisi luuletusi. Translated by Mathura. Allikaäärne, 2019. ISBN 9789949724475. Estonian.[72]
- Apricots of Donbas. Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk, Max Rosochinsky, and Svetlana Lavochkina. Sandpoint, Idaho: Lost Horse Press, 2021. ISBN 9781736432310. Bilingual Ukrainian–English edition.[17]
- Aprikoser i Donbas. Translated by Ida Börjel and Nils Håkanson. Stockholm: Nirstedt/litteratur, 2023. Swedish.[73]
- Les Abricots du Donbas. Translated by Iryna Dmytrychyn and Agathe Bonin. Paris: Éditions des femmes—Antoinette Fouque, 2023. Bilingual Ukrainian–French edition.[74]
- Donbasa aprikozes. Translated by Ingmāra Balode, Māra Poļakova, and Māris Salējs. Riga: Orbīta, 2025. Latvian.[75]
- Meruňky Donbasu. Edited and translated by Alexej Sevruk. Prague: Fra, 2025. Czech.[76]
- Donbaszi sárgabarackok. Translated by Diána Vonnák. Budapest: Prae Kiadó, 2026. Hungarian.[77]
English-language anthologies and other publications
- Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. Edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017. ISBN 9781618116673.[18]
- The Frontier: 28 Contemporary Ukrainian Poets: An Anthology. Edited and translated by Anatoly Kudryavitsky. London: Glagoslav Publications, 2018. ISBN 9781911414490.
- The White Chalk of Days: The Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series Anthology. Edited by Mark Andryczyk. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2018. ISBN 9781618116611.
- Ukraine: Stop Tanks with Books. Photographs by Mark Neville; short texts by Yakimchuk; edited by David Campany. Nazraeli Press, 2022. ISBN 9781590055649.[24]
Film
- Slovo House (2017), documentary; co-screenwriter with Taras Tomenko
- Slovo House. Unfinished Novel (2021), feature film; co-screenwriter with Taras Tomenko
- Some Men Must Die (2023), contributing writer
Stage and music-theater
- The Wall (2019), play
- Freedom Letters (2023), co-librettist and narrator with Mary Branley
- Schrödinger's Cat, play