Thriving in isolation: the poetry of Vasyl Stus
Date and time:
Thursday 9 April, 2020
19:00 - 20:00
Location:
Join us to dive into the extraordinary poetry of Soviet Ukrainian dissident Vasyl Stus.
In these troubled times, the arts can offer a life-saving outlet, and there are few better examples than that of Soviet Ukrainian dissident poet Vasyl Stus. Stus spent more than ten years of his life in the Soviet gulag, repeatedly enduring solitary confinement, without a glimpse of a better future or freedom. Yet he continued his intensive creative work: even completing his magnum opus Palimpsests. His experience remains a testament to how the arts, and our personal vocations, can help us overcome the confines of solid walls and embattled psyches.
Bohdan Tokarsky, Cambridge scholar in Ukrainian Studies, will give a close reading of some of Stus’s seminal poems, with background on Stus’s experience in isolation.
The event will be held in English. Poetry will be in the original Ukrainian (with English translation also provided).
FREE
Speaker
Bohdan Tokarsky
Bohdan Tokarsky is an Affiliated Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge, who has recently completed his doctoral thesis on the poetry of Vasyl Stus. He is a literary scholar, writer and translator.
