Ilya Kaminsky

Deaf Republic (Shortlisted, 2019 TS Eliot Poetry Prize; Winner, 2019 Forward Poetry Prize)

Deaf Republic begins with a gunshot. As an innocent deaf boy falls to the ground, the townspeople choose silence over the sound of a child’s body hitting the street, a sound that would be filled with pain and injustice: ‘The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water’. The rest of the Read More

Dancing in Odessa

I was born in the city named after Odysseus and I praise no nation – to the rhythm of snow an immigrant’s clumsy phrases fall into speech. Ilya Kaminsky is an immigrant but in this his first full collection his phrasing is anything but clumsy. Born in Odessa, his family was granted US asylum in Read More