The history of the Ukrainian flag may serve as metaphor for some of the country’s tumultuous history. Slightly more than century ago during the Ukrainian War of Independence, the order of the two colors was sometimes reversed, with yellow above blue. During Soviet rule, between 1922-1991, the Ukrainian flag was banned, and anyone displaying it was criminally prosecuted for “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

Various other flag designs have emerged in each conflict-riddled decade, including the 1940s-era red above, black below flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, symbolizing “Ukrainian red blood spilled on Ukrainian black earth”, which flew as the UIS battled not only the Soviet Union, but also Nazi Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Communist Poland.

Today, the blue-above-yellow flag is often described as symbolizing the love of freedom surpassing even the need for life-giving sustenance in the form of grain and Ukraine’s biggest export, sunflower seeds and oil. This takes on a stinging poignancy, considering that an estimated 3.9 – 5 million Ukrainians died between 1932-1933 under what was called Holodomor, “Terror-Famine”, a term which combines the Ukrainian words for “starvation” and “inflicting death.”  A United Nations joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 estimated the death-toll to be much higher, closer to 7 – 10 million deaths.

The genocide (some scholars debate defining this peacetime catastrophe as genocide…) was Stalin’s response to the refusal by Ukrainian farmers to abandon generations of traditional land agreements in order to collectivize their harvests under the Communist state. Many who refused were sent to Siberia. Others were simply shot. 

State police confiscated food, and ransacked civilian homes in search of caches of hidden seeds and grain. Eye-witness accounts like that of Hungarian-British journalist Arthur Koestler describe serf-families crowding the train-stations, desperately offering holy icons and embroidered household linens to exchange for a loaf of bread.   

And the worst was yet to come.                                                   

Poet and translator of Ukrainian poetry Olena Jennings grew up in a Ukrainian-speaking household in Milwaukee. In 1944, her maternal grandparents fled as refugees from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city which once again is under apocalyptic siege as we go to publication. Jennings’ mother was born in a displaced person’s camp. Yet Jennings considers Ukraine her true home, recalling her first visit there in 1998 as “…a magical experience. The first time that I really felt at home in my skin was there.”

She is the author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment (2017) and the chapbook Memory Project (2018.) Her novel Temporary Shelter was released in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press. Her translation from Ukrainian of Vasyl Makhno’s collection Paper Bridge is forthcoming from Plamen Press. She is also the founder and curator of the Poets of Queens reading series, and has contributed translation to the collection Pray to the Empty Wells by contemporary Kyiv-born author Iryna Shuvalova, published by Lost Horse Press.

Jennings frequently collaborates on translations from the Ukrainian language to English with colleague Oksana Lutsyshyna, an award-winning writer, translator, and literary scholar. The latest of Lutsyshyna’s poetry collections, Persephone Blues, was published in English translation in 2019 by Arrowsmith Press. Her latest novel Ivan and Phoebe (2019) has been awarded the UNESCO Lviv City of Literature Award in 2020, and Shevchenko National Prize (2021). Oksana Lutsyshyna is currently a lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Lutsyshyna is currently finalizing her translation of an untitled poem by Kateryna Kalytko, a contemporary writer living in Western Ukraine, which reads:

This natural lyricism persists in the poetic voice of Ukraine, perhaps as a form of resistance to terror and death.

Being a poet, not to mention being a woman who is a poet, has long been risky business in Ukraine. But it is nothing new. Poet Lina Kostenko was born in 1930 and left her mark on history by being part of the shistdesiatnyky (“The Sixtiers”), the literary generation known for their liberal and anti-totalitarian views in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Kostenko was among the first writers of the movement, and her collected works were banned from publication – identified by the Soviet authorities as ideologically harmful and dangerous to the state – for 16 years.

Kostenko repeatedly risked imprisonment by continuing to write and publish in underground periodicals known as the samvydav. In her Volatile Quatrains, #2, Kostenko wrote of “We, the atomic hostages to progress,/ No longer have the forest/ Nor the heavens…We have the alphabet of death: N.P.S. (Nuclear Power Station).”

She shocked the world with kindness and made global headlines by offering flowers to enemy soldiers, a gesture echoed in the counterculture of the West. Pete Seeger took inspiration from Kostenko and her shistdesiatnyky comrades to write his generation-defining ballad, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”,  informed by “Koloda-duda”, a traditional Cossack lullaby referenced in “And Quiet Flows the Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov. Seeger had turned to Sholokhov’s novel for solace in 1955 when his own personal freedoms and safety were jeopardized: he, along with many other American artists, was targeted and investigated by the House of Un-American Activities as an alleged subversive by Joseph McCarthy. Decades later in his old age, Seeger was awarded with Kennedy Center Honors for the landmark importance of the song.

In Seeger’s song, carefree young girls pick wildflowers, and pair off with callow young men who go to war and end up in flower-strewn graveyards. Motifs of earth and soil, wheat, bread and needlework arise organically in the poetic heritage of Ukraine which inspired Seeger, a heritage which continues to illuminate the work of Jennings both as poet and translator.

As part of her Paper Doll Album collection shown at Bliss Art Projects in Sunnyside, Queens, NY, Jennings presented her poems accompanied by dresses she had sewn. She says, “Years ago in Milwaukee my grandfather bought me a sewing machine. The first thing I tried to make was a blouse with French cuffs. It was hard and I didn't take to sewing. In 2013 in NYC I bought a sewing machine. I took lessons with Patti Gilstrap at Stay Sharp Studios. She has a creative spirit that encouraged me to experiment. I get vintage fabrics from various sources and fabric from Fabscrap, a place that sells fabric that has been disposed of by designers.”

She began sewing in 2015, and now usually sews without a pattern, or by combining a few store-bought patterns. “I started out thinking it would be a way to save money on clothes,” she chuckles. “But obviously it turned into something else.”

One of the garments combines a lush bronze brocade with glossy gold metallic gussets, displayed beside a poem in a gilt frame. The poem, called Her Art, examines the close friendship between two girls:

Another “heritage” dress serves as a wearable, walking poem, with lines by Ukrainian poet, activist and painter Taras Shevchenko applied to the garment in melted beeswax using a kistka, the tool used to create Ukraine’s remarkable pysanky patterns every Easter. Shevchenko’s best-known poem, “Testament”, begins with the poet imploring. “When I die bury me / On a rolling plain,” referencing the sun-dappled wheat fields, ancient hills and plunging cliffs of his homeland. 

“Textiles tell a story, with fragments and stitching, and the way the fabric is draped, and the way a garment is worn,” she says. “I see my work as a poet as being a sort of weaver, or stitcher. It’s my job to stitch together disparate images.”

Her work as a translator requires other levels of nuance. For instance, rhyme is a traditional part of Ukrainian verse, yet rhyming schemes often make poems seem dated when translated into English. “To capture the character of the Ukrainian original, I like to read out loud as I work, even if I’m working alone, but especially when co-translating with Oksana,” she says. “Intuition is very important to the process. Reading aloud obviously requires breath, and the power of the spoken word, the spoken poem, projects so much fluidity and urgency.”