Writing in Times of Oppression

Poetry manages to forge connection even in the most hopeless of circumstances. It does not arise in a vacuum, but from the courage of writers who, despite everything, pick up the pen and create new worlds out of necessity. In this program, we pause to reflect on what it means to keep writing in the face of oppression and devastation. 

Ukrainian poet Lyuba Yakimchuk and Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku will engage in conversation with moderator Kiza Magendane, who hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Together, they explore how poetry—despite differing backgrounds and experiences—can form a common thread: a way to resist, to remember, and to connect. 

Luljeta Lleshanaku

Luljeta Lleshanaku is the current Poet Laureate of Albania (2023-2025). Among other things she is also a poet, researcher, journalist, screenwriter, and magazine editor. 

Growing up under the Stalinist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, Lleshanaku was not allowed to study at university. After the dictatorship’s fall in 1990 she studied Albanian Philology and Literature at the University of Tirana and later graduated with a MFA from Warren Wilson College, USA. She has been awarded fellowships at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa in 1999, as well as at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada in 2008. 

Lleshanaku’s poetry has been described as innovative and unique, disconnected from American and European tradition as well as Albanian convention, reflecting the literary isolation she experienced growing up. According to Lleshanaku herself, the American aesthetic and the philosophy of a continuous tradition made up of a multitude of individuals is alien to her and her culture. Similarly, the poet and critic Michael Hofmann points out that her poems carry in mind neither critic nor reader, making them transcendent of time and culture, as her critic and editor Peter Constantine notes as well. The tone of her poems is tactile and multifaceted, at times critical and honest, at other times humorous or melancholic. 

Luljeta Lleshanaku’s nine poetry collections have been awarded several prizes, including the Silver Pen 2000 by the Albanian Ministry of Culture, the Tirana Book Fair Award in 2013, and the PEN Albania in 2016. In 2022, she was named European Poet of Freedom. Her work has been translated into French, English, German, and Slovakian, among other languages. Lleshanaku lives in Tirana and works as the research director at the Institute for the Studies of Communist Genocide. 

Lyuba Yakimchuk

Lyuba Yakimchuk is a Ukrainian poet, writer, playwright, and performance artist. She grew up in Pervomaisk, Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, and earned her Master's degree from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2011. Her work is praised for its bold language, and she was named one of the hundred most influential people in the Ukrainian arts by The New Voice of Ukraine.

Yakimchuk has published two poetry collections, including Apricots of Donbas (2015), which describes the war in Ukraine and was awarded the International Poetic Award by the Kovalev Foundation in New York. Her poetry has been translated into more than 25 languages and has appeared worldwide in publications like The New York Times and BBC. She performed her poem Prayer at the 2022 Grammy Awards.

Lyuba Yakimchuk’s attendance in this event was made possible by the Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds and Ukranian Institute.