Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow Short-listed for the 2022 International Griffin Poetry Prize
Judges Adam Dickinson (Canada), Valzhyna Mort (Belarus/US), and Claudia Rankine (Jamaica/US) each read 639 books of poetry, including 57 translations from 24 languages, submitted by 236 publishers from 16 different countries.
Judges’ citation: “The lyrical voice of Natalka Bilotserkivets rings, strong and pure, through several generations of Ukrainian poetry, from the Soviet censorship and Chornobyl, to the joys and losses of post-independence. In Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow we get to witness a lifelong bewilderment that transforms the historical into the intimate, with tender and meticulous precision. These poems balance thought and emotion on the scales of linguistic music, beautifully captured in English by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky. Bilotserkivets is a poet capable of taking us from the 20th into the 21st century, through the darkness of old and new losses, with the strength refined into grace.”