Lyubov Sirota

Lyubov Sirota
File:Lyubov Sirota.JPG
Occupation	poet, writer, playwright, journalist, translator

Lyubov Sirota (Ukrainian: Любов Макарівна Сирота) (born June 21 1956, in Irtyshesk in the Pavlodar area of Kazakhstan) is a Ukrainian poet, writer, playwright, journalist, and translator. As a former inhabitant of the city of Pripyat, and one of the eye-witnesses and victims of the Chernobyl disaster, she has devoted a large part of her creative output to the Chernobyl catastrophe. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including English.

Biography

Lyubov Sirota was born in 1956 in Kazakhstan (then a part of the USSR) to a large family that had been deported from the Ukraine. At the age of one, her family moved to the capital of Frunze (now Bishkek). Her mother wished to move to the city so that the children would have more opportunities for education and development. Sirota spent her childhood in Frunze, where she was a member of the city literary studio, "The Dawns of Mountains". There, among other fine things, she received spirit of the dissident: freedom-loving and validity-loving. Her first literary works were printed in the periodical press in Kyrgyzstan. In 1975 Lyubov Sirota moved with her parents to the native land of their ancestors, The Ukraine. There, she completed a degree in Russian language & literature, in the Philological faculty at the Dnipropetrovsk National University.

File:Pripyat Palace of Culture - 1985.JPG

Pripyat Palace of Culture "Energetik". On the facade: a greeting and flags of the countries - members of Advice of the Economic Mutual aid, which have participated in the Meeting on atomic engineering in the spring of 1985 in Pripyat.

From 1983 she lived with her son Alexander in the new city Pripyat (a satellite town of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station; only 1.5 km away), where she constantly worked as the head of a literary association called "Prometheus", and of a literary studio for children. She was also the manager of the cultural - mass department of the Palace of Culture "The Energetik" (literally, the ‘energy plant worker’).

File:Pripyat poetry theatre.jpg

The actors and founders of the play about the life and creativity of Marina Tsvetaeva "My specialty – a life" near the poster on a porch of the Culture Center "Energetik" in Pripyat, 1985. Lyubov Sirota - on the right below.

Additionally, a stage at the Palace of Culture was where she delivered, as scriptwriter and director, two of her stage plays. These were the musical/poetic play "We couldn't not find each other"; and "My specialty - a life", which was a big play about the life and creativity of the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva. The latter was very successful in the town... She was going to repeat the play about M. Tsvetaeva on May 4, 1986, but on April 26 the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear station destroyed all her plans and the plans of all the inhabitants of Pripyat. Lyubov Sirota and her son were among the tens of thousands evacuated from the area in the hours after the event. From this moment, there began for all of them a life beset with every difficulty, deriving from the forced evacuation, the pain of parting with their native city of Pripyat, the loss of friends and acquaintances, the endless treatments and hospitalizations.

Despite all her suffering, however, this terrible experience gradually strengthened her poetic talent. To express her grief and rage, she turned to writing poems, and collected them in a book named Burden. This was published in 1990 in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, where Sirota now lives with her family. Some years ago she worked for the first time as a film editor in the Kiev Film Studio named after Alexander Dovzhenko. Also, immediately after evacuation from Pripyat, Lyubov Sirota regrouped the literary studio "Prometheus" as a creative group that used verses and songs to proclaim the truth about city of the Atomic Station, and about its people. This work has lain and in outline of art-documentary film “Threshold”, about which the press has widely commented. However, repeated hospitalizations for fatigue and pain (typical results of radiation exposure) increasingly interfered with her work. Since 1992 Sirota has been an invalid of Chernobyl, but nevertheless even at home she continues her creative work and continues the struggle to prevent new disasters like Chernobyl. Her poems have been translated from Russian into other languages, and are now known in many countries from the translation of her poems in 'Burden' into English by Birgitta Ingemanson. There is another version by Elisavietta Ritchie and Leonid Levin, through the auspices of Professor Paul Brians in the United States, thanks to whom her poems have been published in many magazines and anthologies in the United States, Canada and UK. (The First International Center of Woman’s Memories, Biographies and Testimonies)

Creativity

So, the poetry of Lyubov Sirota became more widely known after the Rollan Sergienko's film about the Chernobyl catastrophe, which she co-authored, "Threshold" (1988); and after her anthology "Burden”, which was released in 1990 in Kyev (Ukraine).

"Lyubov Sirota — the poet with unusually sharp sensation of time. Emotionality of her word, organic communication of the civil and personal beginnings, scale of thinking create a magic forceful field of her poetry, as much as possible outline radius of poetic self-expression of the author" — from the summaries to the book of Lyubov Sirota "Burden” by A. Cvyd .

"The thinking about the spoiled nature, illnesses, about human tragedies, them caused, about love – the main themes of her poetic cycle "Burden”. In present article I’ll only touch verses of a nature and life experience though all her poems, due to their depth and poetic perfection, might become a basis for active discussion.

Probably, that Lyubov Sirota has tested on itself consequences of the technology already pulled out from under the control of the person and rising against him, in her poetry we shall not find the slightest hint on any ideological positions. She not search and consider the roots of all evil, it already is in our memory, which the ideology should not erase.

View of the center of ghost town Pripyat including Chernobyl power plant, 2007. Photos of Alexander Sirota.

The cycle opens a triptych of the poems devoted to Pripyat, to the evacuated city, the black windows of which as though inquires about the reason of an event. The dead city only at night comes to life in dreams of people which have run from it, it again is born in moonlight lighting at the windows of stunned homes:

At night, of course, our town

though emptied forever, comes to life.

There, our dreams wander like clouds,

illuminate windows with moonlight.

(Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie)

In these lines we meet for the first time a verb to light, conducting us on all poetic cycle together with its most different values, synonyms and semantic variants. It is possible to assume, that it is reflection — both conscious, and spontaneously irrational — that awful fire, the involuntary spectator and eyewitness of which the poetess was. Reading verses of Lyubov Sirota, we receive appreciable impression, that radiation radiated by a reactor, not only has taken root into a body, but also in consciousness of the poet and that it continues to work, prompting in the poetic imagination of poet the light, fiery or radiant images, that have adequate reflection in her poetry. So deeply that fire was embodied in consciousness of the poetess, what even in the verses which have been not connected directly with Chernobyl accident (as, for example, in chaste erotic or in civil poems), frequently перекликаются concepts and the images connected with the fire. In the same poem, in the second verse of a triptych, we appear before a picture of the stars falling on a city roadway, simultaneously realistic (as personally tested) and apocalyptical:

…And stars are thrust down

onto the pavement,

to stand guard until morning. …

(Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie)

The sentry already is not necessary: the star already has fallen. The city which is coming to life only in dreams, dies on each dawn. The theme of ecological tragedy is not may be separated from that, what Lyubov Sirota feels it as moral tragedy: really, the Pripyat’s society was not only struck radiation, but also dismembered, humiliated with empty promises of those who might, but has not constrained a word. The most burning grief — is not so much from loss of health, how many from loss of a home. The poet directs the groans to the houses transformed into phantoms; her grief and disappointment in neglect of those, who did not expect and then has not provided safety (we are — the payment for rapid progress, /we only – are victims of someone's sated afternoons). After self-sacrifice of the first rescuers, the Pripyat’s society has lost the solidarity and… it has lost the “memory” — and it’s most terrible kind of indifference:

…We are doomed to be left behind by the flock

in the harshest of winters…

But when you fly off

don't forget us, grounded in the field!

And no matter to what joyful faraway lands

your happy wings bear you,

may our charred wings

protect you from carelessness. …

(Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie)

This loss is not grateful and simultaneously reckless, as because of it we risk not only isolation of one more power station in a concrete sarcophagus or the own city already transformed into a phantom, but also decomposition on spectrums, transformation into a phantom of all Earth. Verses of Sirota always so are silent and even are pacified, however at times they are full of indignation:

…But nothing will silence us!

Even after death,

from our graves

we will appeal to your Conscience

not to transform the Earth

into a sarcophagus! …

(Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie)

Apparently, and in it, third, poem of an initial triptych devoted to reflection a moral responsibility and civil duties, the hint on the fire does not disappear: that “the singed wing” is and should be the terrible warning for all. The real grief convinces of negligibility of worldly intrigues and efforts: having lost the all, the poet already not does aspire to anything and she accept even the simple looks of people with gratitude, because their each action, even and ordinary, it for her a gift; each favorable smile and even each sharp sight are equally precious poetic material, transformed in the verses. Contrary to all difficulties пережитой tragedies the desire to transform experience in poetry does not fade:

… Life went up in smoke from somebody's campfire

(this world has inquisitors to spare!).

Everything burned,

burned up.

Even the ashes

were not always left behind…

…

But with merciful hands you extinguish

the fatal fire under me.

May the flame of the redeemed soul shield you! …

(Translated from the Russian by Leonid Levin and Elisavietta Ritchie)

Fiery images characterize all poetry of Lyubov Sirota, however in the quoted verses they are brightest, significant. As it seems to me, in her creativity the personal experience and the poetic imaginations have achieved perfect mental-physical symbiosis: that “fire”, has passed through a body of the poet and was transformed in the poetic power.

In poetry of Sirota an appeal to the civil consciousness, the updated feeling of a brotherhood and reflection concerning ecology have the indissoluble basis and do this cycle unique in the world literature, thanking not only originality of her experience of life, but also thematic originality of her book.

Personally I do not know, that earlier nuclear catastrophe had in the poet simultaneously both the public prosecutor, and the singer; I am convinced, that the “Burden” is one of the first texts, that really declare about ecological catastrophe, menacing to all of us.

If till now to us were offered the texts, named ecological, that whether because of caution from risk, menacing to the certain territory, or the texts mourning already lost beauty of a concrete landscape, or, at last, declaring about already having place disintegration of Globe, — in poetry of Sirota we have all the named elements giving to the text completely new quality in synthesis.

The grief, evacuation, illness, indifference, oblivion make this material as the requiem of our Grey everyday lives. However there is one more element increasing a saturation of a poetic material of a cycle, — the sneering, which it was necessary to collide to innocent people, the victims and the victims because of irresponsibility of the responsible (official) persons ready even to diminish tragedy and to deny her evidence, but only to not recognize the fault.

Especially angry voice of the poet sounds in a poem "RADIOPHOBIA" (Radiophobia) (Red. the poem was written and filmed in film "Threshold" still in 1988, it is directed against the lies, falsehoods, and double standards of the criminal authorities of the former USSR), in which, as it seems to me, the art-poetic values inherent in other her works, here somewhat concede to the deserved indignation, however this poem becomes a conceptual, ethical-ecological core of all cycle. I shall quote the most expressive places of the text, but I shall leave them without comments because, in my opinion, they would sound a little bit false: (text the poem "Radiophobia" ..." — written in the article "Reflection of ecological thinking in Russian art texts of XX century" by the professor of the Bergamo University Ugo Persi (the magazine "Russian abroad", 3/2001)

The poem "Radiophobia" has sounded in the film "Threshold" and in many radio programs, has inspired Julio Soto — director authors of the film "Radiophobia" (Spain – USA) and artist Michael Genovese — the author of window frescos with the text of this poem in the Ukrainian Village Chicago in 2006 ("RADIOPHOBIA". A Chernobyl Poem by Lyubov Sirota, in Russian. Enamel on glass, Chicago, IL., 2006)

"For those who were at the epicenter of the Chernobyl cataclysm this word is a grievous insult. It treats the normal impulse to self-protection, natural to everything living, your moral suffering, your anguish and your concern about the fate of your children, relatives and friends, and your own physical suffering and sickness as a result of delirium, of pathological perversion. This term deprives those who became Chernobyl's victims of hope for a better future because it dismisses as unfounded all their claims concerning physical health, adequate medical care, food, decent living conditions, and just material compensation. It causes an irreparable moral harm, inflicting a sense of abandonment and social deprivation that is inevitable in people who have gone through such a catastrophe." — Dr. A. Kharash wrote in the article about Lyubov Sirota "A Voice from Dead Pripyat"

Before the Chernobyl catastrophe Lyubov Sirota wrote more the lyrical poems, which were published in some periodicals of Kirghizia and in newspapers of Ukraine: "Dnepr Miner", "Tribune of Power Specialist", "Flag of the Victory", etc; in the literary almanac "Literary Ukraine"; in the collective poetic collections of Ukraine — "The Steps" and of Russia – "The Sources", etc.

And after the Chernobyl catastrophe her products were published in such newspapers, almanacs, of Ukraine: “The Truth Ukraine”, “Literary Ukraine”, "National newspaper", "Independent Ukraine", "Our Ukraine", "Your Health ", "Ukrainian Forum ", "Education", "Chernobyl Newspaper", "Post Chernobyl " and in many other; in the magazines “Ukraine”, “Dnipro”, "Extreme Situation", "Scientific World", etc., in Latvian magazine " Cinema " №4/1989; and in the poetic collections: "Chernobyl. Days of tests" (Kiev, 1988), "Passing in a zone" — the poetic anthology (Kiev, 1996), "Chernobyl beside..." (Kiev, 2000), etc.

Now her poems are known all over the world, thanking to the translations into English, German, Japanese, Italian, Polish (in Polish her lyrical poems have been published in the collective collection "Ukrainian Love Poetry", Warszawa, 1991). But nevertheless her poetry became more known, thanking to the long-term diligence of the professor of Washington University Paul Brians his web page about Lyubov Sirota "The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota" her poems have sounded in the National radio of America (program Terra Infirma), have been issued in English in such anthologies, almanacs, magazines and poetic collections of the USA and Canada: "Life on the Line: Selections on Words and Healing"; "Perspectives from the Past"; "A Fierce Brightnesss: Twenty-Five Years of Women's Poetry", and also in the Canadian and American magazines: "Calyx", "Woman World", "Promin'", "Journal of the American Medical Association"; "New York Quarterly", "WISE", "The Russell Record Magazine", "The Modern Review", "In Our Own Words", etc.

Her own translations of the poetry of known Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus in Russian have been issued in the book "Vasyl Stus. "And you same burn down"(Kiev, 2005).

The hard life experience after Chernobyl has led Lyubov Sirota to the understanding what terrible danger the atomic engineering and all dangerous technologies carry, the pain-alarm was already not only for destiny of own family, own city, own country (Ukraine), but also for destiny of all world, for all, who live on the Earth. This universal pain dictated more from the lines of her poems after Chernobyl.

She is convinced, that to describe all this there will be not enough of one life, therefore the theme of Chernobyl, as well as a theme of a survival and spiritual regeneration of mankind — continue to remain the main themes of her poetry, publicism and prose now…

Especially fully and sharply these themes are expressed in her essay about the destinies of Chernobyl women "Excessive burden" and in her prose book — film-story "Pripyat syndrome", which has been recently issued at support of the site Pripyat.com and the International public organization "Center PPIPYAT.com".

Also this life experience after Chernobyl has led to the understanding of necessity to search for a way for survival of mankind and rescue of our planet. So "The Appeal to the citizens of the Earth from the victims of Chernobyl" has arisen, from which the International Annual Action “The Saved Planet” has begun. One of Lyubov Sirota’s articles “The modelling of the future — is a reality” is devoted to this theme.

Books

• Burden: Lyrics. Kiev, 1990. 77 pages. The book cover and pictures of the known Ukrainian artist Andry Chebykin – ISBN 5-333-00637-7 (in English see here: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/chernobyl_poems/chernobyl_poems.html)
• Pripyat syndrome: film-story – Poltava, 2009, 196 pages – ISBN 978-966-182-031-8 (in Russian see here: http://www.proza.ru/2009/04/30/197)
• Vasyl’ Stus. "And you same burn down". Poetry. Kiev, 1990. 77 pages. – ISBN 5-333-00637-7 (in Russian and Ukrainian)

Article and essays

• “The modelling of the future – is a reality” – ПОСТ ЧЕРНОБЫЛЬ/POST CHERNOBYL", 2004. (in Russian see here: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/chernobyl_poems/savedplanet.html)
• "Excessive burden" "ПОСТ ЧЕРНОБЫЛЬ/POST CHERNOBYL", №№3-22, of 01.04.2008

Drama and film scripts

• "We couldn't not find each other" — the musical-poetic drama in one act.
• "My specialty — a life" – the play about a life and creativity of the great Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva in two acts.

Bibliography

• Paul Brians “The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota"
• Dr. Harash "Voice from the dead Pripyat"
• Ugo Persi "Reflection of ecological thinking in Russian art texts of XX century" – the magazine "Russian abroad", 3/2001, Moscow

In the English translations

• "Journal of the American Medical Association" JAMA Vol 268, No 5 August 5, 1992 (Lyubov Sirota: page 665)
• The New York Quarterly" – a magazine devoted to the craft of poetry, Number 48, 1992, pages 128 (Lyubov Sirota: page 109) – ISBN 0028-7482 / Library of Congress
• "Life on the Line: Selections on Words and Healing" – Mobile, Alabama: Negative Capability Press, 1992, pages 647 (Lyubov Sirota: Charter VIII “With hope for life”, pages 607 – 626) – ISBN 0-942544-16-1 HBK; ISBN 0-942544-15-3 PBK; Library of Congress Card Number: 91-091330
• "Calyx" – a journal of art and literature by woman, Winter 1992/1993, Volume 14 number 2, pages 126 (Lyubov Sirota: pages 58 – 75)
• "WISE" – World Information Service on Energy, Vol. 449/450, 10 April 1996 (Lyubov Sirota: page 26)
• "The Russell Record Magazine" – Summer 1999, Volume 27/ Number 3 (Lyubov Sirota: page 17)
• "Promin” is published monthly by Ukrainian Woman Association of Canada Vol. XXXVIII April No 4, 1998 (Lyubov Sirota: page 7-9)
• magazine "Woman's World", Canada
• "Chornobyl' – poruch: Fotoal'bom. Chernobyl Concerns Everyone: Photoalbum. In English and Ukrainian" – Rare Ukrainian Album-Book. (This album contains many photo materials about Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station accident. Many rare color and black and white photos are included in it.) Published in publishing house "Dnipro", Kiev, 2000 , pages 217 (Lyubov Sirota: page 160) -
• "A Fierce Brightnesss: Twenty-Five Years of Women's Poetry", Corvallis, Oregon: Calyx Books, 2002, pages 217 (Lyubov Sirota: page 160) – ISBN 0-934971-83-8
• "Perspectives from the Past: Primary Sources in Western Civilizations".W.W. Norton & Company. New York – London. College Book, 1998, Second Edition ,Volume 2, pages 628 (Lyubov Sirota: pages 621 – 623)

– ISBN 0-393-95879-5 (rbk.)

• "Perspectives from the Past Primary Sources in Western Civilizations". W.W. Norton & Company. New York – London. College Book, 2005 –Third Edition (Volume 2), pages 840 (Lyubov Sirota: pages 828 – 832)

– ISBN 0-393-97822-2 (rbk.)

• "In our Own Words. Stories, essays, lyrics &verse from A Generation defining itself", Volume 7, 2007, pages 283 (Lyubov Sirota: pages 248-252) – ISBN 978-0-9654136-9-1
• "The Modern Review" is published quarterly by the Parsifal Press Literary Arts Association. – Volume II / Issue 1, September 2006, pages 172 (Lyubov Sirota: pages 19 – 36), Canada
• Estill Pollok "Available Light", Cinnamon Press, 2007, pages 78 (with a superb collection featuring translations of Russian poet Lyubov Sirota: pages 55 – 78) – ISBN 978-1-905614-06-6

External links

• The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota
• Lyubov Sirota. About publications
• Chernobyl Book – The Pripyat Syndrome
• Lyubov Sirota. А survivor from Pripyat
• An Appeal to the citizens of the Earth from the victims of the Chernobyl catastrophe
• Lyubov Sirota. Poem “Radiophobia” (video)
• “Threshold” – documentary about the Chernobyl disaster, featuring various poets, and singers from the town of Pripyat. Production Company: Dovzhenko Studios, 1988. Director: Rollan Sergienko. Script: Lyubov Sirota, Victor Grabovsky, Vladimir Shovkoshotny, etc. (in Russian – "Porog"
• "Radiophobia" – film Julio Soto: Spain/USA/Ukraine, 2005, 56min (Lyubov Sirota is one from heroes of this film)
• Lyubov Sirota’s YouTube channel "Our Pripyat"
• The Saved Planet. Lyubov Sirota’s LiveJournal
• Lyubov Sirota’s MySpace Blog
• Virtual Pripyat. Address book of Chernobyl zone. Lyubov Sirota
• Russian Literature
• Lyubov Sirota Poems (in Russian)
• Lyubov Sirota. Prose (in Russian)
• Lyubov Sirota. Poems (in Ukrainian)