The poems in this debut English-language collection meditate on the changing sense of reality, temporality, mortality, and intimacy in the face of a catastrophic event. While some of the poems have been composed in the months preceding the full-scale invasion of the poet's homeland, others have emerged in its wake. Navigating between a chronicle, a chorus, and a collage, Still City reflects the lived experiences of liminality with urgency and intensity, offering different perspectives on the war and its aftermath. The collection engages a wide range of sources, including social media posts, news reports, witness accounts, recorded oral histories, photographs, drone video footage, intercepted communications, official documents, and songs, making sense of the transformations that war affects in individuals, families, and communities. Now ecstatic, now cathartic, these poems shine a light on survival, mourning, and hope through moments of terror and awe.
Oksana Maksymchuk was born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1982. She is the author of two award-winning poetry collections, Xenia and Lovy, in the Ukrainian, as well as a co-editor of Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry. Her English-language poems appeared in The Irish Times, The London Magazine, The Paris Review, Poetry London, PN Review, The Poetry Review and elsewhere. Oksana was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowship and a winner of Scaglione Prize from the Modern Language Association of America, Peterson Translated Book Award, American Association for Ukrainian Studies Translation Prize, Richmond Lattimore Prize, and Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize. She holds a PhD in ancient philosophy from Northwestern University. In the recent years, Oksana has been dividing her time between her home in Lviv and various visiting appointments in the United States and Europe.
• The debut English-language collection from a Ukrainian poet reflecting on her experiences
of the invasion of her homeland
• Engages a wide range of sources, including social media posts, news reports, witness
accounts, recorded oral histories, photographs, drone video footage, intercepted
communications, official documents, and songs
• Explores the transformations of familial, community, and erotic connections in war time
• Now ecstatic, now cathartic, these poems shine a light on survival, mourning, and hope
through moments of terror and awe
