Nobody Knows Us Here and We Don’t Know Anyone

Kateryna Kalytko’s sophisticated poetry volume, Nobody Knows Us Here, and We Don’t Know Anyone, deals with separations and changes, hinting at the ongoing war in Ukraine. One can intuit that the characters, succinctly depicted, are Crimean Tatars, Jews, or the displaced citizens of Ukraine, refugees from the occupied territories.

However, these departures and partings, acute alienation and pain that permeate the poems, could also be read as elements of a more philosophical and global matrix, relevant to any region and each and every human being. Losses, wars, and abandoned houses in Kalytko’s poetry are elevated to the realm of the universal myth of home and its loss, akin to the banishment from the garden of Eden. Kalytko’s visual images are stunningly detailed, and her poetic language rich and exuberant.

Volume 11 in the Lost Horse Press Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series. Bilingual Edition.