Victoria Amelina

Today, we sadly note the passing of Ukrainian novelist and poet, Viktoriya Yuryivna Amelina (January 1, 1986 – July 1, 2023), later known as Victoria Amelina, the author of two novels and a children's book, a winner of the Joseph Conrad Literary Award and a European Union Prize for Literature finalist.

She died on July 1, aged 37, from injuries sustained in a Russian missile strike on a pizza restaurant in the eastern town of Kramatorsk.

Poem About A Crow

In a barren springtime field
Stands a woman dressed in black
Crying her sisters’ names
Like a bird in the empty sky
She’ll cry them all out of herself

The one that flew away too soon
The one that had begged to die
The one that couldn’t stop death
The one that has not stopped waiting
The one that has not stopped believing
The one that still grieves in silence

She’ll cry them all into the ground
As though sowing the field with pain

And from pain and the names of women
Her new sisters will grow from the earth
And again will sing joyfully of life

But what about her, the crow?

She will stay in this field forever
Because only this cry of hers
Holds all those swallows in the air

Do you hear how she calls
Each one by her name?

--Victoria Amelina