Congratulations to Prof. Yuliya Ilchuk

Congratulations to Yuliya Ilchuk (Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures) and (Professor, UC San Diego and 麻豆高清 alumna, Ph.D., Comparative Literature, 2004) for their translation of the Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk's poetry that was short-listed for , the most prestigious poetry prize.
A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails
Amelia M. Glaser, USA and Yuliya Ilchuk, Ukraine translated from the Ukrainian written by Halyna Kruk, Ukraine Arrowsmith Press
Judges鈥 Citation:
鈥淭hese poems of witness may be wrought from a horrendous war, composed in times of turmoil and void of leisure, yet the Ukrainian poet Halyna Kruk's mastery is evident on every page, the keenly observed scenes and perplexing details visualizing the dire situation of her country but also its people's defiance: 鈥榳ar doesn鈥檛 suit the rest of the world / like mutilation with an evening gown: / the look鈥檚 too heavy / the language too sharp / the details too brutal鈥. Kruk's poems grapple with the bare existential questions, every so often turning into prayer, into conversations with a merciless god, pleading to not 鈥榪uiet the voice of anger鈥. What do you take with you when 鈥榚ven keys / are non-essential鈥? How to maintain hope when realizing that human warmth may be deadly in times of war and its thermal imaging devices, how to cope with the loss of certainties while grasshoppers keep on chirping and shells are landing on the fields like birds of passage? Sometimes tender, offering surprising moments of stubbornly persistent beauty, sometimes bitter and hard, Kruk's poems are also a reminder for the rest of the world to 鈥榯ake us in, like unpleasant medicine鈥. A necessary and powerful collection.鈥