Photo: Contributed
Coldstream poet Laisha Rosnau has won the 2020 Kobzar Book Award, given biennially to Canadian writers who explore the Ukranian-Canadian experience through their literature.
Her poetry collection, Our Familiar Hunger, earned her the prestigious prize.
“I was overwhelmed at the honour of the Kobzar Award, in particular, because of what it represents,” Rosnau said. “These poems are the fractured reality of trickle-down inheritance, studies of the epigenetic grief we carry and the myriad ways our grief interferes with or interprets our best attempts.”
The poems shift in time and place, moving from the Russian Revolution to the massive state-imposed famine in Ukraine to early Ukrainian immigration to Canada and prisoner camps across Canada during the First World War. The collection explores different types of hunger, whether it be for love, sexual desire or literal hunger for sustenance.
Our Familiar Hunger was also the winner of the 2019 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
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