Serhiy Zhadan


Serhiy Viktorovych Zhadan is a Ukrainian poet, novelist, essayist, and translator.

Life and career

Zhadan was born in Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast in Ukraine. He graduated from H.S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University in 1996 with a thesis on the work of Mykhail Semenko and the Ukrainian Futurist writers of the 1920s. He then spent three years as a graduate student of philology, and taught Ukrainian and world literature from 2000 to 2004. Since then he has worked as a freelance writer.
Zhadan is an internationally known Ukrainian writer, with 12 books of poetry and 7 novels, and winner of more than a dozen literary awards. In March 2008, the Russian translation of his novel Anarchy in the UKR made the shortlist of the Prize. It was also a contender for "Book of the Year" at the 2008 Moscow International Book Exhibition. In 2009 he won the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Literary Prize. In 2012 Gunshot and Knife won Ukrainian rating "Book of the Year" for fiction. His 2010 novel Voroshylovhrad won him the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland, BBC Ukrainian's "Book of the Decade" award and Brücke Berlin Prize. His selected poems Dynamo Kharkiv won Ukrainian "Book of the Year." His book Mesopotamia won the Angelus literature prize in 2015, the Award of the President of Ukraine "Ukrainian Book of the Year" in 2016.
Zhadan has translated poetry from German, English, Belarusian, and Russian, from such poets as Paul Celan and Charles Bukowski. His own works have been translated into German, English, Estonian, French, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Belarusian, Russian, Hungarian, Armenian, and Czech.

Theater and multimedia projects

His novel Anthem of Democratic Youth has been adapted for the stage and performed at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater in Kyiv. Since 2004 he has worked with Yara Arts Group form La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, contributing to the shows: "Koliada: Twelve Dishes", "Underground Dreams", "Hitting Bedrock" and "1917–2017: Tychyna, Zhadan and the Dogs,".
His poems "Spy," "Chaplain" and "Needle," translated by Tkacz and Phipps were part of "Blind Spot," an installation by Mykola Ridnyi and Serhii Zhadan for the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale May–July, 2015 See photos

Music projects

Zhadan collaborated with Kharkiv-based music band Luk. Most of Luk's Ukrainian-language songs included lyrics based on works by Zhadan.
The tribute album Khor monholskykh militsioneriv was released in 2008. The songs include lyrics by Zhadan, performed by Kharkiv musicians.
Since 2007, Zhadan has collaborated with another Kharkiv band Sobaky v Kosmosi, now known as Zhadan and the Dogs. They released the albums — The Army Sports Club, Weapons of the Proletatiat, Fight for Her, Dogs and Madonna.

Political Activism

Zhadan's active involvement in Ukrainian Independence began while a student and has continued throughout the various political crises in Ukraine. In 1992 he was one of the organizers of Kharkiv neo-futuristic literary group "The Red Thistle". He participated in the 2004 Orange Revolution demonstrations against corruption and voter intimidation in the presidential run-off elections, was the commandant of a tent camp in Kharkiv. The protests resulted in a revote ordered by Ukraine's Supreme Court. He has repeatedly expressed sympathy for anarchists, and in many of his works there are "left" motives.
In 2013 he was a member of the coordination council of Euromaidan Kharkiv, part of the nationwide protests and violent clashes with police. The 5 day Maidan revolution resulted in resignation of Russian backed President Yanukovych. In 2014, he was assaulted outside the administration building in Kharkiv.
Since 2014 Zhadan has made numerous visits to the front lines of the Eastern Donbas region involved in armed conflict with Russian separatists. In February 2017 he co-founded Serhiy Zhadan Charitable Foundation to provide humanitarian aid to front-line cities.

Critical reception

Rostislav Melnikov and Yuriy Tsaplin of the New Literary Review wrote in 2007:
Zhadan's prose is so poetic, his free verse so prosaic. It is difficult to assign a genre to his work: memoir, travelogue, timely or untimely meditation – or a mixture of all these, centered on the themes my generation and our epoch.

Kirill Ankudinov, writing for Vzglyad.ru in June 2008, said:
There is no summarizing the spicy, hot, sweet, vicious improvisations of Serhiy Zhadan – this is verbal jazz. When you read him, you fear for contemporary Russian literature: of those now writing in the Russian language, there is none among them who is so infernally free.

Poetry in English translations

Poetry