About this book

My poems here are inspired by corresponding poems by Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (Тарас Григорович Шевченко).

If you want to understand the originals, they are represented elsewhere by translations that adhere to the originals as closely as possible, which has not been my intention here. I don’t understand Ukrainian, so I’ve begun with literal translations. I have not tried to reproduce Shevchenko’s rhythms or rhymes. Nevertheless, a bad translation isn’t necessarily a bad poem; it might just be an artifact of one way to listen.

Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) was a poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist, and ethnographer. He was born as a serf, was made to be a servant, and was bought out of serfdom because of his talent as an artist and a writer. He was born in Moryntsi, then part of the Russian Empire, which today is in Ukraine. The oppression of workers and peasants in Ukraine moved him deeply. He wrote his poetry in Ukrainian, and described the oppression of the Ukrainians by the Russian upper classes. He advocated Ukrainian nationalism and was arrested, imprisoned, and exiled to a military garrison for his “radical” views, where he was forbidden to either write or paint.

The work of many poets deserves more time and attention, and imitation is one way to study it. Shevchenko’s life and work are both inspiring.

The cover and contents pages feature two self-portraits that Shevchenko etched in 1860. Click to switch them, then to jump to the contents page, then back. Other self-portraits are shown on the last page.

Orthography

The Ukrainian alphabet is a variation of Cyrillic script (named after Saint Cyril, so pronounced with a soft C). It is generally phonemic. Twenty-one letters represent consonants, ten represent vowels, and one represents a semivowel (й). The soft sign (ь), which appears only after consonants, indicates that the preceding consonant is soft (palatalized), whereas the apostrophe indicates that the preceding consonant should not be palatalized, similar to the hard sign in Russian (ъ).

Pronunciation of Ukrainian letters
Uk	like	Uk	like	Uk	like
А а	father	І і	meet	Т т	top
Б б	bed	Ї ї	yeast	У у	boot
В в	water	Й й	boy	Ф ф	fit
Г г	hello	К к	king	Х х	ugh
Ґ ґ	gold	Л л	like	Ц ц	sits
Д д	dog	М м	my	Ч ч	check
Е е	bed	Н н	never	Ш ш	shoe
Є є	yes	О о	long	Щ щ	fresh cherries
Ж ж	vision	П п	peep	Ь ь	[softens the preceding consonant]
З з	zoo	Р р	Italian terra (rolled)	Ю ю	use
И и	wit	С с	sea	Я я	yard

How this book is organized

The book has three pages for each poem. The language codes label the links in the header. Uk is the language code for Ukrainian.

En: My poem (in English)
Uk+literal: The original Ukrainian poem, with a literal translation on its right
En+Uk: My poem, with the original Ukrainian poem on its right

The poem “Orphans,” based on Shevchenko’s poem “Вітер з гаєм розмовляє,” is included also in my book Fifty Bad Translations.

Links and shortcuts

In any page, you can click on or touch links to jump around in this book.

Each entry in the contents links to the poem.
The title for a poem links back to the contents, highlighting the entry for the poem.
Words in the headers and footers link to the index, the contents, a listing of books by the author, to this page, and to the previous and next poems in the book.

You may find the following keyboard equivalents to be convenient. Here I use the symbol ⌥ for the option key on Mac/OS or the alt key on Windows, ⇧ for the shift key, and ⏎ for the return (enter) key. Arrow keys are ◄ (left), ► (right), ▲ (up), and ▼ (down).

Keyboard shortcuts for navigating this book
Context	Keys	Jump to / Behavior
cover	⌥ ◄	Books by Tom Sharp
	⌥ ▲	About Tom Sharp
	⌥ ►	about this book (this page)
	⌥ ▼	contents
	⇧ ⌥ ▼	contents
contents	⇧ ⌥ ▲	cover
	⌥ ▼	select the next item in the contents
	⌥ ▲	select the previous item in the contents
	⌥ ►	open the selected page
	⌥ ⏎	open the selected page
poem	⇧ ⌥ ▲	contents
	⌥ ◄	contents
	⌥ ▲	open the previous page
	⌥ ►	open the original + literal translation, translation + original, or translation in rotation
	⌥ ▼	open the next page

The poet

Tom Sharp is a Native American of Aleut heritage, a member of Seldovia Village Tribe. He is the author of numerous books, including Spectacles: A Sampler of Poems and Prose, Taurean Horn Press (ISBN 0-931552-10-9), a novel, Hans and the Clock (ISBN 979-8580172484), The book of science, SciFi (ISBN 979-8694935210), Things People Do (ISBN 979-8687425568), The book of beliefs (ISBN 979-8683553593), The I Ching (ISBN 979-8573510620), Images (ISBN 979-8577560515), Aleut Artifacts (ISBN 979-8575608998), Aleut Words (ISBN 979-8582103394), and First Nations (ISBN 979-8682924769).

You may email tom/AT/liztomsharp/DOT/-c-o-m-/ to share comments on this work.