Uladzimir Liankievič

© Siarzhuk Miadzviedzieu

Uladzimir Liankievič (in Belarusian Уладзімір Лянкевіч) was born in Minsk in 1987. During the protests following the presidential election in Belarus in 2020 he was arrested twice and sentenced to a total of 21 days in prison. His current poems, dealing with the experience of physical and psychological violence, demonstrate plainly the amazing ability of poetry to be truly political and speak about aggression and defenselessness, protest and apathy, pathos and cynicism, solidarity and hate, hope and desperation, courage and fear. He inscribes into his poems the difficulty of finding the right words and the right tone in the face of this emotional seesaw (a sad catchword in the Belarus of 2020). Victims and perpetrators clear their throats, let words and sounds out, swear, stutter and repeat what’s just been said. Liankievič has done brilliant translations of the poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, Vladimir Majakovski and William Blake into Belarusian. His own poems have been translated into several languages including Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Russian, Swedish and Ukrainian.

Publication:
70% vady (70% Water). Knihazbor, 2013.

Awards:
2014: Maxim Bahdanovič First Collection Prize

Festival Content

VERSSCHMUGGEL BELARUS – GERMANY

The focus of this year’s VERSschmuggel/reVERSible translation project is on poetry from Belarus. In view of the current political situation it seems more apposite than ever to let the country’s poets be as loud as possible and to intensify bilateral relationships, especially on levels other than the political one.

Julia Cimafiejeva • Özlem Özgül Dündar • Jonis Hartmann • Andrei Khadanovich • Uladzimir Liankievič • Maryja Martysievič • Andre Rudolph • Daniela Seel • Tania Skarynkina • Ulf Stolterfoht • Dmitri Strozev • Uljana Wolf