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Serhiy Zhadan is the most popular poet of the post-independence generation in Ukraine. His work speaks of the disillusionment, difficulties and ironies of life that the collapse of the Soviet Union has brought to the country. Once, the enfant terrible of Ukrainian letters, now approaching 30 he is acknowledged as the most important poet of the current decade, as well as one of the leading voices of the last century. For example, the magisterial anthology A Hundred Years of Youth: Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry (Litopys: Lviv, 2000) which included the 100 best poets of the twentieth century, concluded with a selection of his work. His most recent published book of poetry, History of Culture at the Turn of This Century (Kiev, 2003), has been the talk of literary circles in Ukraine since its publication in the fall and has been nominated as the “Book of the Year” in Ukraine. His visible audience is young and vocal. They fill large auditoriums for his readings and snap up his published books. Mr. Zhadan also has earned deep respect among fellow poets and literary critics. He is undoubtedly the most quoted contemporary writer in Ukraine.

Serhiy Zhadan was born on August 23, 1974 in the small town of Starobilsk in the Luhanask Region of eastern-most part Ukraine, a mere ten kilometers from the Russian border. He moved to Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, in the early 1990s to attend university and has lived there since. He graduated from the Kharkiv Teacher’s College, where he wrote a thesis on the work of Mykhail Semenko and the Ukrainian Futurist writers of the 1920s.

His early poetry was influenced by the re-discovery of Futurist and Constructivist “classics” that had been banned for seventy years. His ironic and carnavalesque work from the late 1990s is now seen as a continuation of the presentational style of The Bu-Ba-Bu group of post-modern poets from Western Ukraine. Most recently, there has been a great change in the style and tone of his work. He has abandoned traditional Ukrainian syllabotonic versification for a more open structure. Clearly, Zhadan’s initial interest in American Beat Poets, especially Charles Bukowski, along with his international experience during writing fellowships in Vienna and Berlin, crystallized his new style and unique view of Ukraine today. As Bob Holman, producer of the PBS Poetry Series with Bill Moyers and the Bowery Poetry Club, noted when shown the translations that makeup the sample for this project “We've been waiting for this History of Culture at the Turn of the Century. Serhiy Zhadan's imaginings are an x-ray that sees through the flesh of now into the bones of the past, somehow observed from a vantage point in the future, hovering above the earth. How Ukrainian is it, how revelatory of the US it is, how Universal are his innocents and ironists. It is thrilling to have a young voice from the interior of Europe have a word with us, which is exactly how these translations feel. These poems are the illuminations of hope.”

Serhiy Zhadan is the author of eight collections of poetry: Rose Degenerate (1993) NEP (1994) Book of Quotations (Kiev, 1995) General Judas (Kiev, 1995), Pepsi (Kharkiv, 1998), the very, very best poems, psychedelic stories of fighting and other bullshit (Donetsk, 2000), Ballads about War and Reconstruction (Lviv, 2001) and History of Culture at the Turn of This Century (Kiev, 2003). Recently he published his first book of short stories: Big Mac (Kiev, 2003) and a first novel Depeche Mode.In 2001 the Arabesque Theatre of Kharkiv staged his text Merry Christmas, Jesus Christ, as a musical. It was published in Maskult Publication together with a selection of new texts by Yuriy Andrukhovych and Andriy Bondar.

Zhadan was one of the first Ukrainian poets to be featured on Poetry International’s Website http://ukraine.poetryinternaltional.org/cwolk/veiw20612, which includes an introduction by Andriy Bondar and several poems in translations by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps. These were featured in readings by Yara Arts Group as part of the kolo nas series in Kiev and as part of the In Verse series in New York. Zhadan’s early poetry has been translated by Dzvinia Orlowsky and Michael Naydan. Ms. Orlowsky has also translated his poem “Islam,” which appeared last year in the American literary journal Diner, published by Poetry Oasis in Worcester, MA. Zhadan’s poetry has also been translated into German, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Byelorussian, Russian and Armenian. Mr. Zhadan, himself translates from German, Byelorussian and Russian.

Mr. Zhadan, who speaks German, has been awarded fellowships to Berlin and Vienna. These include: the Toefer Fellowship for a residency in Hamburg and Vienna 2001-2002, the Herman Kesten Fellowship for Germany in 2001, and the Kultur Kontakt for Vienna in 2003. He has also traveled to New York with the Arabesque Theatre.