Description:
On the Road to Lviv by celebrated writer Christopher Merrill, invites us across Ukraine in the hour of war. Deeply personal yet rooted in recent history, the poem is chronicle, document of war crimes, and a sober self-reflection.
Brief description: Nina Murray is a Ukrainian-American poet and translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Glapthorn Circular (LiveCanon Poetry, 2023) and Alcestis in the Underworld (Circling Rivers Press, 2019) as well as several chapbooks. Her award-winning translations include OksanaZabuzhko's Museum of Abandoned Secrets, and Oksana Lutsyshyna's Ivan and Phoebe (Deep Vellum, 2023). Her translation of Lesia Ukrainka's Cassandra was performed at the Omnibus Theatre in London in 2022, and toured to Cambridge and Oxford in 2023. Nina grew up in Lviv and lives, for the moment, in Cambridgeshire, England.
Review Quotes:
"At times deeply personal, and at others, more detached, this book-length poem serves as both elegy and eulogy for a country that has only rarely been peaceful, and certainly not since the advent of the 20th century and the two World Wars that redefined both political relationships and nations in Europe. Merrill's poet-speaker provides the reader with necessary history and geography lessons that aid in the understanding of both the text and the ongoing conflict. This becomes the framework upon which the central questions about human dignity and cultural identity are hung."
Carlene Gadapee, MicroLit