Ukrainian Born Poet Ilya Kaminsky reads “We Lived Happily During the War"

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government.

He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books).

His work won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK).

Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book for 2019, and was also named Best Book of 2019 by dozens of other publications, including Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Irish Times, Vanity Fair, Lithub, Library Journal, and New Statesman.

His poems have been translated into over twenty languages, and his books are published in many countries, including Turkey, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. In 2019, Kaminsky was selected by BBC as “one of the 12 artists that changed the world.”

Ilya Kaminsky has worked as a law clerk for San Francisco Legal Aid and the National Immigration Law Center. More recently, he worked pro-bono as the Court Appointed Special Advocate for Orphaned Children in Southern California. Currently, he holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Institute of Technology and lives in Atlanta.

Brought to you by Complexly, The Poetry Foundation, and poet Paige Lewis. Learn more: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ Ilya Kaminsky: https://www.ilyakaminsky.com/ https://twitter.com/ilya_poet