Ilya Kaminsky

This week “Letters of the Alphabet Go to War” by Lesyk Panasiuk, a book of poems that Katie Farris & I translated from Ukrainian is out from the wonderful Sarabande Books

Lesyk is from Bucha, Ukraine, where some of the worst atrocities of this century took place.

sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...

Here is a new poem. Already revised, alas. But for what it’s worth: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Many thanks to Jeff Shotts and Kevin Young.

“Psalm for the Slightly Tilted” “This is not / a good year. / But it has / witnesses.”

“I saw my people lean—
not toward hope but toward each other.”
—Ilya Kaminsky

Ivory background with black quote marks in the upper left and lower right hand corner. The white Sarabande logo is in the upper right. To the lower left is an image of the book LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET GO TO WAR. The text quoted in the center reads: "...The imagery is modernly, and terrifyingly, Kafkaesque. The poem’s brevity, nonetheless, personifies another horrifying reality faced by Ukrainians each and every day: how quickly war unravels lives and routines, and how drastically it reshapes an individual. - Nicole Yurcaba, World Literature Today"

✨ LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET GO TO WAR by Lesyk Panasiuk, trans. by Ilya Kaminsky & Katie Farris (Jan 20), was praised by World Literature Today (@worldlittoday.bsky.social) as "modernly, and terrifyingly, Kafkaesque."

Read this timely + essential collection! www.sarabandebooks.org/all-titles/p...

They killed a young poet on a street while a university in Texas forbids teaching Plato (among other things), and president can’t stop talking about buying an island that has no desire to be sold. That was the first week of the year in a strange country getting stranger by the hour, my Horatio.

2/2

Our Kids Poetry Studio in Odesa is now in its 3rd year & kids, many of whom are refugees of war, are writing beautiful poems. Despite bombardment and sleepless night, they showed up. Here is a link: poemsnotbombs.org. Please consider donating to support this work.

1/2
Hello from Odesa, Ukraine, friends. An intense 24hours here, ranging from sleepless night of bombardments to a wondrous meeting of poetry with kids at our Poetry Studio (poemsnotbombs.org) here in Odesa.

Dark navy blue background background. A white Sarabande Books logo is located in the lower right corner. An image of the book jacket is center left. Above the jacket cover it reads, “Poetry,” and below it reads, “Available January 2026.” To the right of the jacket is the quote: “Panasiuk uses language as a living character [...] The poems are full of visceral imagery, evoking the emotional experience of war…” —The Library Journal, starred review

✨COVER REVEAL!✨ Poetry in translation collection LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET GO TO WAR by acclaimed Ukrainian writer Lesyk Panasiuk, translated by National Book Award finalist poet Ilya Kaminsky (@ilyakaminsky.bsky.social) and Katie Ferris is available January 2026.

🔗 Preorder link in bio!

Friends, I will be taking time away from social media for a while. Be well.

Vacation

Today I cannot receive you
desperation, disappointment, tough legions of death.
Come by some other time, never,
and leave gallantly your business cards.

Emil Botta, Tr. from Romanian by Liviu Georgesc

When our government is asking to spend millions of dollars on the unnecessary wall instead of very necessary health care plans, these words should be our rallying cry:

"Move disability from the realm of medicine into that of political minorities"

--Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Thank you

I went to college in 1997. My mother was a widow, a refugee, and couldn’t help me pay for it. There is no way I would be able to afford college if it was 2025 & the bill US Congress just passed was the law of the land. There are millions of people like me. What a shame.

Everyone is tired of endless images of violence—but if I don’t post this, who will? Since you won’t find it in most Western news: Russia attacked Odesa again, yet another assault this week. “A court martial of a city,” a friend calls it.

“ Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. "All. How many?
It's a big meadow….”

Szymborska wrote this after WW2. What changed? Starving people is a war crime. Starving people is a war crime.

t.co/9Elc3lTWud

Killing people in food lines is a war crime.

Nope.

Four words, and already we are in Kafka Territory:

"Hey You! Papers, please?"

Overheard:

"Soon, bored with their i-phones, i-pods and other forms of "mini me" which they see as mirrors, and not forms of surveillance -- they will udnerstand: t o remember is to betray a regime built on forgetting. Memory itself becomes a form of rebellion."

overheard:

"In a life-time of a regime, a moment arrives when vulgarity isn’t a personal failing — it’s a state policy. Kitsch is armor against ethics; it’s collective anesthesia, pumped through every glowing screen and marching chant.

👍💐

Our Kids Poetry Studio in Odesa is in second year and kids, many of whom are refugees of war, are writing poems. If you read Ukrainian, here is the article: vo.od.ua/rubrics/kult... If you read English, here is a link: poemsnotbombs.org. Please consider support this work.

Yesterday, Russia unleashed the biggest drone bombardment on Ukraine since war. People died. Meanwhile in Odesa, Ukraine, kids who are refugees of war continue to meet at the poetry studio and write poems—despite attacks on the city.

Please support:

poemsnotbombs.org

Overheard:

“—This isn’t a time for decent people.”
“—When is?”

"Pain and suffering are a kind of currency passed from hand to hand until they reach someone who receives them but does not pass them on."

--Simone Weil