“We are delighted to inform that the 2022 European Poets of Freedom are Marianna Kiyanovska (Ukraine) with The Voices of Babyn Yar and Luljeta Lleshanaku (Albania) with Water and Coal. The translators of the selected volumes, Adam Pomorski and Dorota Horodyska, will also be awarded.

The official award ceremony will take place on 10 June during the European Poet of Freedom Festival (9-11 June).

The Jury of the European Poet of Freedom Literary Award convened in Gdańsk on 25 April 2022: Anna Czekanowicz, Krzysztof Czyżewski (chairman), Paweł Huelle, Zbigniew Mikołejko, Stanisław Rosiek, Anda Rottenberg, Beata Stasińska, Olga Tokarczuk and secretary Andrzej Jagodziński (who did not take part in the vote). In the 2020-22 edition, the Jury selected from among five shortlisted volumes.
From the outset of our deliberations, during the first selection of our choices, all Jury members unanimously stated that two of the shortlisted books, The Voices of Babyn Yar by Ukrainian poet Marianna Kiyanovska, translated by Adam Pomorski, and Water and Coal by Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated by Dorota Horodyska, put them in an unusual situation, effectively preventing them from choosing just one of the two for the Award, reads the justification of the Jury’s choice.

After several hours of deliberations focused on the two volumes, the Jurors again unanimously decided that they thought both Kiyanovska and Lleshanaku delivered two equivalent, complementary and equally brilliant poetic achievements. The Jury’s verdict was presented to the Mayor of Gdańsk Aleksandra Dulkiewicz, who agreed to award two equal prizes.
The Jury about Marianna Kiyanovska’s The Voices of Babyn Yar translated by Adam Pomorski

“This is a song of mourning, where Kiyanovska achieves the utmost brilliant, constructing simple stories filled with individual experiences and marked by the premonition of inevitable doom. (…) This is carnal poetry, the poetry of pain and blood that elude being assigned to a specific place in time. Suffice it to change the names of people or places for the poem to immediately become terrifyingly topical as an elegy lamenting the mass graves of Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol.”
The Jury about Luljeta Lleshanaku’s Water and Coal translated by Dorota Horodyska

“Water and Coal is a masterpiece, full and finite. Its precise structure and extraordinary economy of words only enhance the impression of perfection. Lleshanaku’s poems poignantly describe how one strives for freedom in the enslaved world where she was born and grew up. The poet is also a polymath, combining different experiences in her work, not just her own, making her poetry universally appealing. She sounds like a pure, impeccable crystal.”
/ a.jor./