Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters

Iya Kiva’s poetry, collected in English translation in Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters, stitches memories of the past into Ukraine’s new reality. Her lyric poems reflect her Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish backgrounds and acknowledge the deep trauma of war while radiating love and hope. Born out of the pain and loss of a fragmented present, Iya Kiva’s poetry, collected in English translation in Silence Dressed in Cyrillic Letters, stitches memories of the past into Ukraine’s new reality. Since war broke out in her native Donetsk in 2014, she has become a prominent voice of Ukraine’s internally displaced citizens, finding new metaphors to express the ongoing uncertainties of this time. Kiva first began publishing in her native Russian but, since the Donbas war, she has shifted to writing in Ukrainian. Her poems also reflect her mixed Ukrainian, Russian, and Jewish background and contribute to defining contemporary Ukraine—a culturally and linguistically diverse sovereign country. As Ukraine struggles for its existence, Kiva offers lyric poems that acknowledge the deep trauma of war while radiating love and hope.