Cover Image for While We Were Waiting for War

While We Were Waiting for War

Oleksandr Kocharyan, trans. by Anna Lordan
Special Issue 3 (2023)

Oleksandr Kocharyan’s quiet poem of anticipation draws attention to the civilian experience of waiting for the big war. In the words of the translator Anna Lordan, the poem focuses on ‘relationships and intimacy—intimacy with objects, with people, intimacy with people expressed through objects’.

 

while we were waiting for war
I bought alcohol
a supply of fuel tablets
and a small aluminium kettle.

when we left,
I gathered them up—I didn’t know
whether or not we would need them.
we didn’t need them.

I call my mother.
I listen to her talk about a damaged and burning pipeline
I try to convince her to take
the kettle and the alcohol and the fuel.

she says, what are you talking about
I don’t need them
that pipeline is miles away from here.

 

[Read in Ukrainian here].

 


Image: Marjan Blan. Unsplash.


Cover Image for Crimean Tatars: Eighty Years of Remembrance and Resistance

Crimean Tatars: Eighty Years of Remembrance and Resistance

Issue 2 (2024)

For the eightieth anniversary of the Soviet deportation of Crimean Tatars, the London Ukrainian Review dedicates its second issue of 2024 to the Russia-occupied Crimean peninsula and its Indigenous people’s ongoing fight for justice.

Sasha Dovzhyk
Cover Image for The Long Exile: A History of the Deportation of 1944

The Long Exile: A History of the Deportation of 1944

Issue 2 (2024)

The mass deportation of Crimean Tatars in May 1944 is rooted in Russian settler colonialism which Martin-Oleksandr Kisly traces to the subjugation of Crimea by Catherine II. Eighty years after the grievous crime against the Indigenous people of Crimea, Crimean Tatars are under Russia’s occupation and banned from marking this historic date.

Martin-Oleksandr Kisly, trans. by Larissa Babij