Oksana Maksymchuk Still City (Paperback)

Still CityOksana MaksymchukLabel: University of Pittsburgh PressDescription: Longlist The 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist 2025 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry One of Financial Times's Best Summer Poetry Books of 2024 The poems in Oksana Maksymchuk’s debut English-language collection meditate on the changing sense of reality temporality mortality and intimacy in the face of a catastrophic event. While some of the poems were composed in the months preceding the full-scale invasion of the poet’s homeland others emerged in its wake. Navigating between a chronicle a chorus and a collage Still City reflects the lived experiences of liminality offering different perspectives on the war and its aftermath. The collection engages a wide range of sources including social media posts the news reports witness accounts recorded oral histories photographs drone video footage intercepted communication and official documents making sense of the transformations that war effects in individuals families and communities. Now ecstatic now cathartic these poems shine a light on survival mourning and hope through moments of terror and awe.