Ukraine | The Common

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

August 28, 2025 Poetry, Translation

Translated from the Ukrainian by OLENA JENNINGS

From Girl with a Bullet, forthcoming October 2025

Presented in Olena Jennings’ seamless translation, Anna Malihon’s new collection, Girl with a Bullet, is one of the most important books of the year for those with an interest in the fate of Ukraine, a gift to Anglophone readers.

—John Hennessy, poetry editor

Table of Contents:

[The girl with a bullet in her stomach]

[Don’t go into that home]

[Now the only thing that you can do for her, Christ,]

[Unfold and dive into me, to my very bone,]

When a Missile Finds a Home

November 6, 2023 Issue 26, Issue 26 Poetry, Poetry

By OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK

Cat in the window
examines the snowflakes that float—
marks of art in the winter dark

It’s a Christmas Eve in my homeland
the things to come
waiting to be unwrapped

The August Story

May 8, 2023 Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA
Translated from the Ukrainian by OLENA JENNINGS and YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA

If their history together hadn’t begun this way,
they both would have been left alone, each with their war.
August—hellish, the bathhouse filled with bodies.
She squeezes the familiar palm and comes to life again.
Everything that has happened and didn’t happen to them,
is established, set in stone, unforgettable,

April 2023 Poetry Feature

April 27, 2023 Poetry

April Is Poetry Month: New Poems By Our Contributors

MARK ANTHONY CAYANAN, DAVID LEHMAN, and YULIYA MUSAKOVSKA (translated by the author and OLENA JENNINGS)

Table of Contents:

Mark Anthony Cayanan

—Ecstasy Facsimile (These days I ask god…)

David Lehman

—The Remedy

—A Postcard from the Future

—Last Day in the City

Yuliya Musakovska (translated by the author and Olena Jennings)

—Angel of Maydan

—The Sorceress’ Oath

January 2023 Poetry Feature

January 13, 2023 Poetry

New poems by our contributors TINA CANE, MYRONN HARDY, and MARC VINCENZ

Table of Contents:

            Tina Cane
                        —You Are Now Interacting as Yourself
                        —The Subject Line

Myronn Hardy
—Among Asters

Marc Vincenz
—An Empire in the Ground

You Are Now Interacting As Yourself
By TINA CANE

Sheila had IHOP     delivered to her apartment     in El Alto, NY
on January 6th     so she could kick back     self-proclaimed terrorist
that she is     and eat pancakes     while watching white supremacists
storm the Capital on T.V.     a coup

Looking for Anton Chekhov

December 7, 2022 Dispatches

By A. MAURICIO RUIZ

Yalta, Ukraine

The minibus stops in the middle of the road and the driver opens the door, he says something in Russian which I take to mean I need to get off. I begin to walk on a red dirt road that meanders down, and in front of me, the vastness of the Crimean terrain opens up, splotches of yellow overgrown grass, young bushes and wildflowers, the quiet dark sea in the distance.

Long Shadows

April 15, 2022 Essays

By MELODY NIXON

“Wake up and help us fight before they come for you.”
—Oksana Zabuzhko

From Lviv In March

March 23, 2022 Dispatches

By NICK MAIONE

Lviv, Ukraine

Is Poetry Possible at the Moment History Stirs: Poets of Ukraine

March 9, 2022 News, News and Events

I ask
Half-awake
Is poetry possible
At the moment history stirs
Once its steps
Reverberate through every heart?

— From “Can there be poetry after” by Anastasia Afanasieva, translated by Kevin Vaughn and Maria Khotimsky

With the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, we at The Common have been reflecting on the powerful words of many Ukrainian poets who have appeared in our pages. In recent years their work has been rooted in conflict, as the country struggled first with self-determination and later with the Russian annexation of Crimea and, since 2014, with a Russian-incited war in the East. This focus lends a feeling of prescience and timeliness to their work now, even though most of these poems are not new. We hope you’ll make time to read and reflect on the work of these poets, as we all keep Ukraine and the Ukrainian people in our thoughts.

On Halloween

November 4, 2020 Dispatches, Translation

By VASYL LOZYNSKY

Translated by the author and JESSICA ZYCHOWICZ

Hudson, NY

I feel greedy, I have a frog in my throat because of this
expensive beer. I start to ask around, like a detective,
and immediately get some info
from the writer sitting at our table nearby,
whom I got to know just now.
The house of Ashbery has likely mahogany doors facing
the square, probably where city hall is.
I don’t even think about visiting without letting
someone know first. I stop and read a few poems in a bookshop.
You won’t repeat the jokes, I say,
you’ll go around to all the apartments on Halloween
with pumpkins, like I used to do
in my childhood, but then the main thing was trick or treat,
not to force someone for an interview or a photograph.

All posts tagged: Ukraine

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

When a Missile Finds a Home

The August Story

April 2023 Poetry Feature

January 2023 Poetry Feature

Looking for Anton Chekhov

Long Shadows

From Lviv In March

Is Poetry Possible at the Moment History Stirs: Poets of Ukraine

On Halloween

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