Poet, writer, teacher and artist Svetlana Ischenko is well acquainted with literary acclaim in her home country of Ukraine, but accepting praise for her work in Canada is an undertaking that still takes some getting used to. The North Vancouver writer’s poetry collection, Nucleus, A Poet’s Lyrical Journey from Ukraine to Canada , has been listed among the five poetry finalists for the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Book Awards. Her first reaction was one of astonishment.
With the province’s wealth of ultra talented writers, she had never expected her works to stand out from the crowd, she said. “I’m still in a state of surprise. There are so many wonderful poets in B.
C., and so many amazing books of poetry published in the past year or so." Her second reaction had been an “overwhelming feeling” of gratitude.
The first of Ischenko’s books to be written in both Ukrainian and English, Ischenko had expected there to be some teething problems as she still got to grips with balancing her mother and new tongue. In her mind, winning an award had never even been on the cards, she said. “I’ve been working on being able to write poems in English for a long time, and I can’t even describe what a deep pleasure it is to have this book written in English acknowledged in this way.
” Born in Mykolaiv, in southern Ukraine, Ischenko documents the life lessons and character shaping that came with moving to Canada in 2001. Via carefully curated stanzas she detai.