2 minutes with… Askold Melnyczuk and Chris Agee

War in Europe, the powerful new volume from Irish Pages Press, contains essays and poems in translation by many of Ukraine’s leading writers and scholars, along with work in English from Irish, British and American writers, and further translations from Irish, Hungarian, Spanish and Belarussian. Readers can also enjoy two outstanding portfolios of photographs and art works, adding a rich visual element to the written pieces. We caught up with the volume’s guest editor Askold Melnyczuk and general editor Chris Agee to find out more.

Could you tell us a bit about how this issue came about?

When Chris Agee invited me to edit this special issue of Irish Pages I seized the opportunity. Ireland is the natural ally of all countries engaged in anti-colonial battles. The very title Chris proposed, “War in Europe”, immediately set the right tone. Without waiting on Brussels, Chris granted Ukraine the wish that has cost it so dearly in blood and treasure: membership in the European Union. It was for this Ukrainians rebelled against their former president, Viktor Yanukovych, and it’s for this they are being punished by Russia today. Hundreds of thousands have died; cities have been leveled. And I’ve just learned that Ukraine’s most celebrated poet, Serhiy Zhadan, plans, at the age of 50, to enlist in the National Guard.

The poetry of Yeats had long provided me with a model of verse which manages to argue both with itself and the world without lapsing into jingoism or rhetoric. I was also fortunate enough to count Seamus Heaney a friend in the years of Ireland’s “Troubles” and to witness how skillfully he managed to weave responses to public dramas with more intimate and personal reflections, to speak to issues relating to the polis without sounding “political”. For some of us, the personal is political, whether we like it or not.

These days my mornings begin with a quick read of the Kyiv Independent, even before The New York Times or The Guardian. Editing this from the safety of Boston, Massachusetts, I’m acutely aware of how far I am from Europe, and further still from the hot war in Ukraine. Surely one of the central tasks for those of us “in between” is communicating the urgency of the situation.

My abiding gratitude to Chris, Jacob Agee, and Milena Williamson. Working with them has been a joy.

A.M.

The book features a broad and diverse range of writing, including work in translation from leading Ukrainian writers and scholars. Could you highlight a couple of examples of what readers can expect?

Many of the leading Ukrainian writers are included, eighteen in all (both prose-writers and poets), as well as further translations from the Irish, Hungarian, Spanish and Belarusian. Outstanding essays include Serhii Plokhy’s major think-piece, “The Fall of the Pan-Russian Utopia”; two wonderful short-stories set in Soviet Ukraine, by Yuri Andrukhovych; Iaroslava Strikha’s haunting meditation on the purpose of translation in a time of destruction; Tetyana Orgarkova and Volodymyr  Yermolenko’s “Crime Without Punishment, Punishment Without Crime”; Nobel Laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk on the normalization of evil and the defence of human rights; and an unforgettable piece of “fiction” on sex and love in a time of war, entitled “Portrait With No Model”, by Marjana Savka. Among many superb poets, Serhiy Zhadan (widely considered Ukraine’s foremost poet, now serving at the front) writes in one poem:

“Let all those who hold up the moon
above this red-hot August have enough strength, enough love.
Let’s not forget the sparkling rays of dawn.
Still, we speak about rain, as if it were
the wedding of loved ones.
We talk about autumn like
faith that will not fail.”

Brilliant essays in English include David Rieff on the nature of a just war; Ed Vulliamy on music and musicians at war in Ukraine; Christopher Merrill on the age of refugees; Timothy Synder in a “Substack Compendium”; and Caroline Forché’s exquisite “Sharing the Darkness” on Ukraine and Gaza, subsequently included in the renowned Best American Essays 2025. Plus Irish offerings from Michael Longley, Moya Cannon, Simon Ó Faoláin and Ciarán O’Rourke, as well as English poet Sonia Jarema’s riveting “A Suite of Poems on the Holodomor”.

C.A.

Along with writing, the issue features photography and artwork. Could you tell us about this element of the issue?

The two Portfolios on special paper are an essential visual complement to the issue’s wide textual and genre diversity: twenty-four photographs taken over three decades, from the Irish-American writer and photographer Patrick Breslin, entitled “Ukraine: A Love Story” (his wife is Ukrainian); and “Don’t Close Your Eyes”, a selection of artworks mainly in colour and in striking variety of styles, heavily Eastern European, with many of the artists recording their experience as soldiers or besieged civilians.

Altogether this issue proffers a uniquely important record of the “War in Europe”, whilst constituting “a testament to the calibre of writing that continues to define Irish Pages” (as one critic has written).

Join us Saturday 8 November for the event Conflict and Creation at our Festival Hub in IMMA Venues, where contributors from both the PATHOS project and War in Europe will be exploring the challenges and necessity of artmaking in times of global conflict. BOOK TO JOIN US