John Farndon

John Farndon is a best-selling author of over one thousand non-fiction books, a playwright, songwriter, poet, and an award-winning translator of literary works. Over the last three years he has translated hundreds of Ukrainian poems and over thirty new Ukrainian plays in conjunction with the Worldwide Ukrainian Playreading Project, including Neda Nejdana’s Pussycat in Memory of Darkness, and Inna Goncharova’s The Trumpeter, staged at London’s Finborough and on tour. Joint winner of the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize for Hamid Ismailov’s Devil’s Dance, 2020 finalist for the PEN Translation Prize for co-translating Rollan Seisenbaev’s The Dead Wander in the Desert.

Translations in London Ukrainian Review:

Maksym Kryvtsov, ‘Falling forest’

Contact:  john.farndon@cantab.net


Iya Kiva, ‘a frozen sea’

Author: Iya KivaTranslationTranslator: Amelia GlaserTranslator: Yuliya Ilchuk

a frozen sea of people rolls stones around its mouth
this dead language of a time we’ll turn to
when the wind cuts life’s thread like a flower […]

trans. by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk

Maksym Kryvtsov, ‘Amid voicing’

Author: Maksym KryvtsovTranslationTranslator: Helena Kernan

Amid voicing
and amid silence
among the trees and the insects
and a fearsome metal seagull. […]

trans. by Helena Kernan
// TODO: add more posts with same tag as [slug] here