Vortex

Vortex gathers a wide-ranging selection of poetry by Vasyl Stus (1938–1985), one of the central figures of twentieth-century Ukrainian literature, an uncompromising dissident, Gulag prisoner, and translator of Goethe and Rilke. Widely regarded as the moral voice of his generation, Stus wrote under Soviet persecution and died in a labor camp, yet he transformed historical extremity into poetry of exceptional philosophical depth and psychological intensity. This bilingual volume presents the most substantial English-language selection of Stus's work to date, spanning from his experimental early poems and a grotesque vision of Soviet totalitarianism to intricate, multilayered meditations written in the Gulag. This volume reveals a poet of rare lyrical power whose voice moves between history and the human condition, confronting freedom, justice, and self-creation with singular ethical force.

Vasyl Stus (1938–1985) was a prominent Ukrainian poet and dissident. He is renowned for his philosophically intricate poetry that fuses existential depth with moral intensity. For his uncompromising defense of cultural and political freedom, he was arrested in 1972 and spent the final thirteen years of his life in Soviet prisons and labor camps. Stus wrote several volumes of poetry, including his magnum opus collections Time of Creativity and Palimpsests created in the Gulag. Bohdan Tokarskyi is Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. A scholar and translator of Ukrainian modern and contemporary literature, he has published translations and scholarship on Vasyl Stus and is currently completing a monograph on the poet's work. 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. She is a retired U.S. Diplomat.