Hackney residents are rallying together to condemn the situation in Ukraine, with fundraising events and discussions taking place across the borough.
Ukrainian nationals now living in Hackney have denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin, as he prepares to take Crimea in a situation that has garnered international condemnation.
Poets and musicians of Ukrainian heritage banded together for a fundraising night in Shoreditch, raising money to provide medical care for Ukrainians caught in the crossfire in the Kiev protests.
St Leonards Church in Shoreditch High Street was treated to poetry from a score of local artists, including Hackney local Olesya Zdorovetska who performed “Subconscious Songs from the Ukraine”.
A celebration of Ukranian voices
Another event saw residents gather in nearby Tower Hamlets for a night of Ukrainian poetry, inspired by the deadly battles in Kiev earlier this year.
The poetry night, organised by the British Ukrainian Society, saw a panel of guests discuss the conflict, including Annabelle Chapman, a freelance journalist working in Poland and Ukraine, and Stephen Komarnyckj, a poet and translator with Ukrainian ancestry.
Organisers said it was a “celebration of Ukrainian voices that can give us a unique perspective on the current political situation”.
Dash Arts co-sponsored the event, which aims to “provide opportunities to participate, see works-in-progress and encounter work that sheds new light on the region of the former Soviet Union”.
Ukraine Poem
We bathe in the flames of dawn.
Is it chance or premeditated enchantment?
A sail beseeches insurrection
Among crimson wax of cloud.
The water murmurs its fire,
Pain smiles in some half dream.
We will not become,
Woe will not materialise,
All we have, the black
Salt of the cosmos.
A Sea Elegy by Ihor Pavlyuk
