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kolo nas In 2002, I was in Kyiv for a half year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Karpenko-Karyi Theatre Institute. For several hours a week, I was busy teaching American theatre history and theory. The rest of the time I organized performances and poetry events. During my first week in Kyiv, I organized a gathering of poets for an evening event with an in teresting twist. Seven poets read their works to an audience composed entirely of people who wrote about poetry or performed it. The reactions to each poem were immediate and visceral. Fascinated with the dynamics and the importance of presence in the arts, I convinced Svitlana Matvienko, then editor of Literatura Plus , to help me organize a series of events that would underscore these elements. We decided to hold our events in art galleries since these venues would allow us to retain the intimate atmos phere of the first gathering. We approached Olek- sandr Musienko, of Dim Art Gallery in the Sofia Museum of Literature, about hosting an event for young poets to compliment his planned exhibit of young painters. He agreed, so I asked Serhiy Zhadan and Andriy Bondar, considered the hottest poets under the age of thirty, to take part in our next event. And so Yara Arts Group launched a series of pro grams presenting new poetry, drama, and music in Kyiv. We decided to call our series “kolo nas” or “’round us,” emphasizing the interaction of the arts and the intimacy of our events. Although the Dim Art Gallery was not easy to find, a wonderful crowd of friends and poetry fans showed up for the event, including Askold Melnyczuk, editor of the renowned Agni Review literary journal published in Boston. After I opened the evening event with brief introductory remarks, poet Andriy Bondar read some of his poems. Fol lowing this, actor Mykola Shkaraban and I read my translations of Andriy’s work. The reading of Serhiy Zhadan’s poetry was again followed by translations. The two poets then read poems on similar themes in what evolved as a kind of poetic duel. Upping the ante, Andriy read some of his most controversial poems, including one written in Latin script (rather than Cyrillic) and another about the newly published literary encyclopedia. Serhiy then countered with some of his best poems. The audience enjoyed the jousting; press re views were glowing. Natalka Fedushchak wrote in the Kyiv Post, “Cutting-edge. Determined. Critical. Those are just some of the words that describe the works of Ukrainian poets Andriy Bondar and Serhiy Zhadan. The two, both 28, are considered some of the brightest minds in Ukrainian literary circles, and they have been able to echo in their works the emo tions of their generation.” Later that fall kolo nas presented “In the Beginning Was Song,” a dialog of traditional songs in Ukrainian and Hebrew by Mariana Sadovska and Victoria Hanna. In January, we hosted an evening with Oleh Lysheha to celebrate the presentation of his new book To Snow and Fire. The following fall, we moved to new quarters: the RA Gallery run by Andriy Trylisky and located near the Kyiv Opera. RA Gallery has turned out to be a perfect venue for kolo nas, and we have been presenting our events there ever since. In the fall of 2003, we dedicated a kolo nas evening to “Another Format,” a new series of books that consist of interviews by Taras Prokhasko with leading new writers and thinkers of Ukraine. To date “Another Format” had published interviews with Oleh Lysheha, Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuri Andrukho- vych, Yuri Izdryk, and Borys Gudziak. We were happy to introduce this innovative series to our Kyiv audience and were fortunate to have Taras Prokha sko, as well as several of the interviewees, present at the event. 18 “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ВЕРЕСЕНЬ 2004 Oleh Drach and Mykola Shkaraban reading at Yara’s ‘kolo nas ’ in Kyiv (photo by Vitali Horbonos) Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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