Volha Hapeyeva

- Belarus -

Volha Hapeyeva, (b. in Minsk, Belarus) is a poet, writer, translator, doctor of linguistics and artist. She writes in Belarusian and German and has received numerous prizes and awards for her work: Wortmeldungen Literature Preis-2022 (Germany), among others. Her poems have been translated into more than 15 languages. She is the author of 14 books in Belarusian (Niaholieny ranak (2008), Hramatyka sniehu (2017), Slovy jakija sa mnoj adbylisia (2019), Paradoks Niemaǔlia (2022), etc.). In German, the poetry collection "Mutantengarten" (Edition Thanhäuser, 2020), the novel "Camel-Travel" (Droschl Verlag, 2021), the essay "Die Verteidigung der Poesie in Zeiten dauernden Exils" (Verbrecher Verlag, 2022), the poetry collection "Trapezherz" (2023) and the novel “Samota. Die Einsamkeit wohnte im Zimmer gegenüber” (Droschl, 2024) were published. In English the poetry book “In My Garden of Mutants” (2021, Arc Publication) was awarded English PEN Translates Award. She was a 2019/2020 writer-in-residence in Graz, a fellow of the Writers-in-Exile Program of German PEN, and in 2022\2023 was a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Since 2019 has lived in Austria and Germany.

 

Website of the poet: https://hapeyeva.org

Instagram of the poet: volya_hapeyeva


Hapeyeva belongs to the leading voices of contemporary Belarusian poetry. Her main topics are loneliness, war, violence, the female body, self analysis and nature. As the German poet Matthias Göritz stresses, Hapeyeva is strongly aware of the richdom of the Belarusian language, which she mobilises strongly in her work. »By reading the poems of Volha Hapeyeva, one can get an impression as if she would be working on a great dictionary of loneliness. She spells the desire for closeness, the great feelings of hope in this closeness... Her poetry is filled with bodily metaphors that prove how important the language as body and the body as language are to her.«

For Hapeyeva, poetry is a means to extend and spread empathy and self-cultivation. Poems are intended for growth, they teach us to coexist in a community in peace. But this does not exclude the topics of violence and hate; the poetess delves into these topics also by questioning the discourses instilled by patriarchy and in trying to achieve visibility for herself and other female artists.

Hapeyeva is attentive to detail, Göritz writes. Her poetry is all about the »small and the concrete« and her precision, paradoxically, elevates these small occurences and phenomena into extraordinary life events.

More about the poet

Poetry

  1. / (Untitled)

  2. / (Untitled)

  3. / (Untitled)

  4. / (Untitled)

  5. / (Untitled)

  6. / (Untitled)

  7. / (Untitled)

  8. / (Untitled)