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ALGOMETRY

ALGOMETRY

$24.00Price

ISBN: 979-8-9890965-2-7

Pub Date: Spring 2025

Pages: 168


By Iryna Vikyrchak

Nina Murray, translator


In Algometry Vikyrchak presents a lyrical portrait of the generation of Ukrainians who grew up and were shaped by shared and individual painful internal and external experiences, to become a resilient and brave nation.


A term of physiology and neurology, algometry is the science of measuring pain. However, it is not physical pain that Iryna Vikyrchak examines in Algometry, but her experiences growing up in Western Ukraine in the ’90s, emphasizing emotional sensitivity and inner strength, which give way to a philosophical and lyrical reflection on pain, suffering, and empathy as a measurement of our humanness. In Algometry Vikyrchak presents a lyrical portrait of the generation of Ukrainians who grew up and were shaped by shared and individual painful internal and external experiences, to become a resilient and brave nation. First published in Kyiv in 2021, Algometry has since acquired new resonance: the title now seems to be a premonition, an anticipation of the big pain that came to Ukraine in February 2022, one that still lingers. The poems, organized in three corridors (Algometry—Anthropology—Amnesia), take the reader through an individual past, a common future, and a lyrical forever. The poetry is complemented with an author’s essay on love, pain, words, and what unites all living beings—a key to understanding this book. Algometry won the 2022 Kovaliv Fund Literary Prize.

    postchornobyl

    they had it rough

    our parents

    moms and dads of the generation y

    the millennials of eastern europe

    had to watch the invisible rays

    our extra inches of liver

    the thyroid degree of enlargement

    the balkan war the collapse of the empire

    lymph nodes hematology caries

    sanatorium electrophoresis

    oxygen cocktails the truskavets mineral water

    ozokerites x-rays

    regularly scheduled power cuts and emergency broadcasts

    when it burned, you and dad were drinking

    homemade wine on Hoverla

    and could see the blaze from there you tell us

    anxious and poorly timed,

    but we’ve outgrown it, ma,

    we’ve outgrown it

    and our anxiety is our greatest strength


    —Iryna Vikyrchak


    translated from the Ukrainian by Nina Murray


    Iryna Vikyrchak is a Ukrainian poet, writer, translator, and culture manager. Before Algometry, she published a poetry collection entitled Conversation with an Angel (2004) and a bilingual poetry album, Time Train: Chernivtsi-Prague-Vienna (2011), co-authored with Milena Findeis. In 2024 her collection of war poems Letters from Kolkata was published in Poland (Pogranicze) as a bilingual Ukrainian-Polish edition.



    Nina Murray is a Ukrainian-American poet and translator. She is the author of the poetry collections Glapthorn Circular (LiveCanon Poetry, 2023) and Alcestis in the Underworld (Circling Rivers Press, 2019) as well as several chapbooks.

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