Iryna Shuvalova
- Ukraine -
Iryna Shuvalova is a poet and scholar from Kyiv, Ukraine. She is the author of five award-winning books of poetry in Ukrainian, including endsongs (2024). Her 2020 collection stoneorchardwoods was named poetry book of the year in Ukraine, while her 2019 bilingual collection Pray to the Empty Wells has been described as 'a revelation' by The Observer. In 2009, she co-edited 120 Pages of ‘Sodom,’ the first anthology of queer writing in Ukraine. Her poetry has been translated into 30 languages and published in Literary Hub, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Words Without Borders, among others. She herself is an award-winning translator bringing modern and contemporary Ukrainian poetry to English-speaking readers. Iryna is also a scholar of culture, politics, and society in Ukraine. She holds a PhD in Slavonic Studies from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge scholar, and an MA in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College, where she was a Fulbright scholar.
Iryna Shuvalova
Iryna Shuvalova is a Ukrainian poet, translator, and literary scholar, born in Kyiv. She is a member of the Ukrainian PEN Club. Shuvalova graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the Shevchenko University and the Kyiv Translators Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 2013, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, which enabled her to earn a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College in the USA. In 2016, she began her PhD studies at the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, where she defended her thesis titled Voices of War in Donbas: Identity Questions in War-Affected Communities through the Lens of Songs. At Cambridge, she also taught a course on the Ukrainian language. Since 2023, Iryna has been working at the University of Oslo in Norway.
As a scholar, her research interests include culture and politics in Eastern Europe, digital folklore, folk art, and the cultural implications of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
“To gain an advantage in any conflict, you have to know your opponent well. You need to understand who is involved in the situation unwillingly. Oral material, especially songs, gives us a unique opportunity to better understand both sides across the frontline,” Shuvalova said in an interview with the Chytomo online magazine.
Iryna Shuvalova is the author of five poetry collections: Ran (Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2011), Os (Kyiv: Smoloskyp, 2014), Az (Kyiv: Elektroknyha, 2014), Stoneorchardwoods (Lviv: The Old Lion Publishing House, 2020), and Endsongs (Lviv: The Old Lion Publishing House, 2024).
Her poetry has been published in numerous Ukrainian periodicals and translated into thirty languages, including English, Bulgarian, Greek, German, Polish, French, Czech, and others. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Modern Poetry in Translation (2017), The Wolf (2017), Podium Literatur (2016), and Plav. Měsíčník pro světovou literaturu (2014), Radar (2010), and International Poetry Review. Special Issue: Twenty-Five Years of Ukrainian Poetry: (1985-2010): New Voices with a Freedom to Create (2010), as well as Catch-Up (2011).
Ukrainian writer and critic Oleh Kotsarev believes that Shuvalova’s poems align with the traditions of European ‘high modernism’: “This may be partly due to her work as a translator. Her world is one of complex associations, a certain mythologization, archetypal imagery, and highly expressive linguistic effects. And, undoubtedly, of constant internal dramatic tension, for all sorts of reasons and in all possible manifestations.”
Writer and publicist Myroslav Laiuk, commenting on the author’s debut book, noted: “Iryna Shuvalova’s poems seem deeply, even programmatically, focused on the lyrical subject, allowing for maximal sincerity and uniqueness. Her poetry is like a club that not everyone can enter, and where everyone is an unwelcome guest.”
“She is simply in her own field,” wrote Vasyl Herasymiuk in the foreword to Shuvalova’s collection. Of course, he meant her authenticity and skill, but the word “field” also suits her book in its most literal sense: a medieval herbarium, in all its complexity and ancient-book quality, seems to awaken on her pages and escape into the earth, into the natural plant kingdom. “This cyclical writing captures the essence of nature from all sides and enchants,” emphasizes poet Natalia Belchenko in her review of Shuvalova’s book Az.
In an interview with the Craft magazine, Iryna described her style: “Texts are either about me or through me. When I reflect on why that is, I think it’s because I started writing at a very young age. I was one of those kids who happily rhymed while running around the house, with my mother lovingly writing it all down. At that time, poetry was a form of play for me. And when you approach poetry with that childlike playfulness, you create stories, worlds, plots, and characters, imitating the voices of the poets you love. So, when I began to discover my own poetic voice in my late teenage years, after years of writing in many different voices, the process of finding my own voice was also a turn toward a deeply personal style of writing—a way of expressing myself as directly as possible.”
Selections of Iryna Shuvalova’s poems can also be found in anthologies such as AU/UA: Contemporary Poetry of Ukraine and Australia (2011), Nova Ukrainska Poeziya (2012), and Clarinettes solaires: Anthologie de la poésie ukrainienne (2013).
As a poet, Iryna Shuvalova has received several prestigious awards, including the Smoloskyp Prize for young authors (2009, 2010), the Ukrainian-German Oleksandr Honchar Prize (2011), the Blahovist Prize for the best debut poetry book (2012), the Metaphor Prize for poetic translation (2012), and the Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize for translation (2012).
She has also been a recipient of international scholarships from the Summer Literary Seminars Unified Literary Contest (2011), the Ventspils Writers’ and Translators’ House (2013), the Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture (2013), the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers (2015), among others.
As a translator, Shuvalova has worked on texts by Louise Glück, Élis Oswald, Rupi Kaur, Yann Martel, Ted Hughes, and others. Her translations have appeared in journals such as Ambit, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poem, and Words Without Borders. The Collection Winter King translated by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova and published by Lost Horse Press is now shortlisted for the National Translation Award in Poetry.
She also co-edited 120 Pages of Sodom, the first Ukrainian anthology of queer literature, which features works by 50 authors from 15 countries. The project aimed not only to introduce Ukrainian readers to new names, themes, and styles but also to promote the development of modern tolerant thinking and a deeper understanding of queer culture from the late 20th to early 21st century.
by Oleksandr Mymruk
Poetry
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vox / vox
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alisa grows up / аліса виросла
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alisa’s scars / шрами алісо
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nothing is going to happen to us / з нами нічого не станеться
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while you sleep (from ‘Kyiv – Nanjing’) / коли ти спиш (із циклу «Київ – Нанкін»)
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cultural stratum / культурний шар
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a moving grove / a moving grove
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vesper / vesper
