Editor’s Note
This long-delayed issue of M-Dash is devoted to Ukraine and offered as a companion to the 2023 Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Studies Conference held at Indiana University and to an accompanying reading from and launch of four books published by Arrowsmith Press.
In this issue, we feature work by Alex Averbuch, Mariya Deykute, Olga Livshin, Oksana Maksymchuk, and Max Rosochinsky, and an interview by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Svetlana Lavochkina, and Grace Mahoney. I will also note the extensive work of Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed behind the scenes in curating this issue. It would not have happened without her.
The context for this collection at this time will be clear to anyone who’s been paying attention to the news of late. It is my hope that people in the not too distant future will need more explanation, for that will mean the despair and horror will have subsided somewhat.
Here I will note simply that we began collecting these pieces in 2022, and have worked to put them into an order and a form that we believe will last beyond our current tragic moment. The result is this issue of M-Dash, which we offer as a bridge, a link, a thread of hope. For after.
Russell Scott Valentino, April 2023
Translating Russophone Ukrainian Poets Now: Linguistic Identity, National Affiliation, and the Uses of Russian, by Olga Livshin
“how to survive what has already happened,” by Alex Averbuch, translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
Language Outside and In: A Reflection on Multilingualism in Poetry, by Mariya Deykute
Apricots of Donbas: Mellowness and Extremes, an Interview by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Svetlana Lavochkina, and Grace Mahoney
M-DASH 