Thin ice

For Iryna Tsilyk — partly for personal reasons — the current Russian-Ukrainian war did not begin in February 2022, but when it began, as evidenced by the author’s previous book “Depth of Sharpness”. The new collection “Thin Ice” includes poems written over the past eight years. This — among other things — means that Iryna Tsilyk writes little. But she knows what and why she writes: “Once, as a child, I fearlessly waded into the middle of a frozen lake in the park. Suddenly I got scared because I heard the voices of adults: “What are you doing? There’s thin ice! You can’t!”... During war, we all walk on the thin ice of our incomparable experiences. It’s easy to lose balance, fall, injure ourselves or injure others with the sharp edges of our own traumas. This collection is an attempt to explore our shaky reality and step cautiously to the shore. The main thing is not to end up on different shores with those we love at the end of the war. So it's worth talking to each other today, while we're — well, as if alive."