The Liberating Spirit of Patricia Nell Warren’s Ukrainian Poetry: Challenges and Rewards of Rending It into English

• In Event: Liberating Translation I: Liberation from Soviet Research and Translation Traditions

Abstract

This paper discusses Patricia (Kylyna) Warren’s Ukrainian poetry and argues that her expressing herself poetically in a foreign language amounted to a linguistic self-exile but, at the same time, offered her a vehicle for freeing herself from any norms and expectations that her oeuvre in English might have otherwise called for. It also provides insights into the process of rendering Kylyna’s Ukrainian poetic “foreignness” into her native English. Her Ukrainian language, often deliberately ambiguous (or sometimes ambiguous because of grammatical inconsistencies), does not always easily translate into English. This paper will share some of the challenges and rewards stemming from translating Warren’s Ukrainian poetry into English.

Author

• Maria G. Rewakowicz, U of Washington