Presented in a dual-language format, A Field of Foundlings is the first in Lost Horse Press’s series of Ukrainian poetry in translation. Starovoyt’s poetry investigates the curse and virtue of forgetting, the suppressed generational memory of the twentieth century, and the new context of its retelling in Eastern Europe. Drawing on the paradoxes of mythology, technology, and tradition, Starovoyt brings the traces of undesirable history and the minefields of memory into an unexpected constellation to interrogate assertions of knowledge and meaning-making in the world today. In a time where the chaos and power of forces beyond our own seem to diminish the potency of the past, Starovoyt’s poems invoke a conscious dialogue with a past that is not severed from the ever-changing present, but echoes in our sense of self, brings some continuity to our daily decisions, and orients us toward the future.

Translated by: Grace Mahoney