Andriy Lyubka (1987) — Poet, writer and essayist. The author of the books of poetry: "Eight Months of Schizophrenia" (Uzhgorod, 2007), "The Terrorism" (Lviv, 2009), «40 Dollars Plus the Tips» (Lviv, 2012); collection of short stories: "The Killer" (Lviv, 2012), collection of poems in German translation «Notaufname» (Austria, Innsbruck, 2012), book of essays “Sleeping with Women” (2014), novel “Karbid” (2015, short-listed to top-5 books of the year by BBC Ukraine; Polish translation was short-listed to the Central-European award Angelus in 2017; Slovenian translation was published in Ljubljana in 2019, English translation was published in London in 2020), collection of short stories “The Room for Sadness” (2016), book of essays «Saudade» (2017), novel “Your Gaze, Cio-Cio-san” (2018), travel essay about the Balkans “In search of barbarians” (2019) and novel “The Small Ukrainian Novel” (2020).
The winner of the prizes “Debut” (2007), “Kyiv Laurels” (2011), recently he received literary award of Kovalev Foundation (USA) and became a laureate of Shevelov Prize for the best book of essays of 2017 in Ukraine. He is the member of Ukrainian PEN.
He is also the translator from Polish, Croatian, Serbian, English and the curator of two international poetry festivals. Lives in Uzhgorod.
How do I write?
In the Cyrillic alphabet I write, with my right
hand, right after 2am, in my notepad
on a page dated “the 18th of August, 20 and 11”,
so it would probably befit to give a dated title to this poem,
but no. I shall not do that, since ‘tis you I wish to write about
but I am writing in Cyrillic, so my writing mostly covers
Prince Igor and his heir Sviatoslav
Nestor the Chronicler, Pamwo Berynda, Gregory Skovoroda et al.
Though why ‘et al.’? I write about The Taras,
about the Union of Lublin and the struggle for the faith
about betrayal of the faith as well — since it’s a struggle in its own right — and about Kvitka
about churches and Bulgaria (you pro’lly have deduced now where I’m going with all this)
I write about Pavych’s mistake (indeed it is the Glagolithic alphabet
that was invented by Saint Cyril and Saint Methody), and I all but avoid
the Serbia of our days (them traitors!); and I never write about whisky, since it is
siwucha I do write about — but of course, since I am functioning in the Cyrillic alphabet
despite being unintelligible to most people on the planet.
And honestly it is the Latin letters that
would be of better style as far as you’re concerned
But sorry, c’est comme ça, there’s nothing I can do about it:
I have to write about Anne of Kyiv the Queen of France, about Bohdan, Ivan
about Samiylo and so on, since God administered three punishments upon us:
the East, the rulers, and Cyrillic letters
So ‘tis Cyrillic that I’m writing in, ‘tis my original sin
Forgive me
Translated by Helen Harney