Ilya Kamińsky

Republika Głuchych

Deaf Republic: poems

Ilya Kaminsky is a Ukrainian–Russian–Jewish–American poet, critic, translator, and professor at Princeton University. He is best known for his poetry collections Dancing in Odesa and Deaf Republic, which blur the boundaries between poetry and drama. His work, translated into more than twenty languages, is now being published in Polish for the first time. A recipient of major American literary awards, Kaminsky was born in 1977 into a Jewish family in Odesa, then part of the Ukrainian SSR. He lost his hearing at the age of four. When he was sixteen, his family was granted asylum in the United States, where he was fitted with a hearing aid for the first time.

His poetry opens a world rich in resonant sound and distinctive rhythm; it does not shy away from urgent civic and political themes while at the same time playing with language and form. Alongside its elevated motifs, there is space for lightness, humour, and sensuality. Deaf Republic is a powerful reflection on the state of today’s world—on war, on deafness, and on the fragility of our shared humanity.