Despite its obvious significance, this event has been not duly appreciated. A multilingual Poetry International Web site has launched a Ukraine section with pages created by Ukraine’s most prominent poets.
The Poetry International Web (www.poetryinternational.org) is an online poetry resource featuring original poems by international authors and their best renderings into English. The Web site is the brainchild of the Poetry International Foundation based in Holland, which is known for its world famous annual Rotterdam Poetry Festival. The site contains pages of its member countries, which are updated on a quarterly basis, and a central international section. Ukraine joined the project late last year alongside Australia, Greece, Zimbabwe, Israel, India, Italy, China, Columbia, Morocco, Holland, Germany, South Africa, Portugal, Slovenia, France, and Croatia, and the membership is growing.
The Poetry International Web stands out from all other online poetry resources primarily for its emphasis on poetry translated into English as a means of international poetic communication. Aside from several hundred poems, the Web site posts news, interviews with famous poets, critical essays, and Camera Poetica videos of poets reading their own works. The personal pages of every poet contain a brief introduction followed by an overview of the poet’s life and work. Quarterly updates of every country’s page are preceded by an editor’s foreword about the poetic climate and main events in the country in question. Every week editors of the central section select the poet of the week, which means that one poem from the chosen poet’s oeuvre is mailed to thousands of subscribers on the mailing list. The editors post all materials on the Web site with permission from authors and translators.
Our section is called Poetry International Web — Ukraine, created under the auspices of the Dutch Embassy in Ukraine and the Renaissance Foundation. Interestingly enough, every country is identified by its own distinctive letter; in Ukraine’s case, it is “ Ґ ” — a hard “g” as in “goose.” Meanwhile, the first Ukrainian female poet to be represented on the Poetry International Web is Natalka Bilotserkivets, who took part in the 2002 Rotterdam Festival. The Ukrainian section now contains the personal pages of Yury Andrukhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, and Oleh Lysheha. Updated in May, the section now includes Ivan Malkovych’s page. Toward the end of the year the section will also add Oksana Zabuzhko, Andriy Bondar, and Viktor Neborak. Remaining true to the high standards of their poetry resource, the editors have posted translations of poetry by arguably the best translators: Bohdan Boichuk and Liza Stefaniuk, James Bresfield, Olena Jennings, Askold Melnychuk, Michael Naidan, Dzwinia Orlowski, Lisa Sapinkopf, Virliana Tkach and Wanda Phipps, and Vitaly Chernetsky.
Thus, our literature in its currently most interesting — poetic – expression has at last been duly represented in cyber space.
