Kiyanovska, Marianna

Marianna Kiyanovska, born 1973 in Zhovkva, Ukraine, is the author of over a dozen poetry collections, most recently “Живі перетворення” (Duch i litera 2020, Eng.: Living transformations) and „Блискавка зустрічає вітер і воду“ (Duch i litera 2023, Eng.: Lightning Meets Water and Wind). She published short story collections and several books of translations, mainly of Polish, Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Czech poetry. Kiyanovska is a member of Ukrainian PEN and National Union of Writers of Ukraine. She was awarded most recently with the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (2022) and the Stanley Peterson Literary Fund Award (2023). The Voices of Babyn Yar (2022) was published in the USA by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Marianna Kiyanovska lives currently in Krakow.

Festival Content

WELTKLANG

Night of Poetry

Betonhalle | 15/10 € Anthology included Tickets

This summer, we are celebrating a night of poetry for the 25th time in Berlin. According to the annals of the capital’s media, the first edition on Potsdamer Platz in 2000 coincided with the sudden onset of a summer cold spell. It was way too dark to read into the anthology, and yet an enthusiastic audience held out until two in the morning.

Opposed to that night’s mythological inception at the turn of the millennium, there are not only warm rooms at Weltklang, but also reading lamps. Since 2023, German and English translations of all the poems read have been published in an anthology that is traditionally limited to people in attendance.

The eight poets from different parts of the world who are taking the stage this evening will read and perform in their original languages, showcasing the intensities that poetry can generate not only in silent reading but also in the spoken word, in the concentration of a poetic voice.

Brassinga, Anneke • Chingonyi, Kayo • CAConrad • Ekhtesari, Fatemeh • Hwang, Yuwon • Kandé, Sylvie • Kiyanovska, Marianna • Vlada, Miruna

WRITING HISTORIES

For history is a wicked stepmother when memory is orphaned

Kuppelhalle | 9/7 € Tickets

How does history become embedded in poetry? And how do poets engage with traces of collective or individual memories while addressing the traumas of entire societies that span across generations? What happens with historical sources in poetic work and how does poetry’s power of imagination change the experience of history? Writing Histories introduces four poets who dive deep into history within their texts and explore its diverse impacts on the present.

Kandé, Sylvie • Kiyanovska, Marianna • Uribe, Sara • Vlada, Miruna

POETRY TALK: MARIANNA KIYANOVSKA UND OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK

so that tomorrow they be not all forgotten

Atelierraum | 7/5 € Tickets

This meeting between Marianna Kiyanovska and Oksana Maksymchuk brings together two Ukrainian poets who write about war and violence in distinctly different and powerful ways.

Kiyanovska, Marianna • Maksymchuk, Oksana