The New Yorker: Poetry · The New Yorker
Valzhyna Mort Reads Victoria Amelina and Wisława Szymborska
July 24, 2024·44 min·3 clips
Victoria Amelina dug up a buried diary from under cherry trees — it belonged to a poet later found in a mass grave of 400 people.
As heard by us
A grave, attentive poetry conversation about witness, silence, and the dead becoming personal.
Valzhyna Mort's New Yorker Poetry conversation treats Victoria Amelina's work as an act of witness, not simply a poem to be admired. The richest passage stays with a cemetery line that at first sounds ordinary, then sharpens: this is a fresh cemetery, not a ritual visit to…
Why you'd press play
For a close read of one cemetery line that opens onto witness, war, and memory.
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