Pushkin Club invites you to a reading of poems by Taras Shevchenko, in classic English translations read by the actors Christopher Good and Kristin Milward. The poems have been selected and will be introduced by Antony Wood; with some poems read in the Ukrainian originals by Christina Tymchyshin and in Russian translations by Elena McGugan.

Now that the centuries of Ukraine’s controversial status at or near the heart of Europe have exploded into the present hell is the moment for its people’s true voice to be heard. For Ukrainians the life and poetry of Taras Shevchenko, a freed serf who died in 1861, embody the spirit of Ukrainian nationhood which has so far tragically eluded political realisation.

Vera Rich’s translations miraculously catch the heartbeat of Ukrainian folk poetry. The narrative poem The Dream devastatingly reverses Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman as a portrayal of unqualified destruction; it earned its author seven years of punitive military service that shortened his life.  His lyric poems, many of them written in prison in Russia, unforgettably express his longings for and memories of his homeland.

This event has replaced the scheduled reading of Antony Wood’s translation of Pushkin’s Rusalka, which is deferred to a later date.

Pushkin Club has held regular events devoted to Russian culture and society since its foundation in 1954.