Volha Hapeyeva and Valzhyna Mort
Posted in 2025-2025 Readings and Talks Announcements
April 7, 2026 at 7:00PM ET
Location: Copley Formal Lounge
Join us for an evening with Belarusian poets Volha Hapeyeva and Valzhyna Mort, hosted by poet and Director of Readings & Talks Carolyn Forché.
Accommodation requests related to a disability should be made by March 31st to lannan@georgetown.edu. A good faith effort will be made to fulfill requests made after March 31st.
[hard to be a road]
–Volha Hapeyeva
Translated from Belarusian by Volha Hapeyeva with Forrest Gander
hard to be a road
especially at the painted zebra
crossing
there
the hOriZOntal
the VErticAl
rush people together and cars
animals sometimes
dogs and pigeons
and bicycles—the new and the ones inherited from those born in the ’30s
as a child
I often confused the horizontal with the vertical
and each time I uttered those words
I imagined a horizon
the horizon, such a long narrow line
in the distance
behind which just now just now the sea
is about to appear
as I, the road,
disappear
Published in the Kenyon Review.
–
Read more about Volha Hapeyeva.
In the Woods of Language, She Collects Beautiful Sticks
–Valzhyna Mort
like a snail with a shell of sticks
— she loads them on her back —
Like a camel with a hump of sticks
— on her back, on her back —
Like a horse with a knight of sticks and a stick for a sword
Where is she taking this load of sticks?
— on her hump, on her hump —
She has no house, where is she taking the house she doesn’t have?
— in the fire she is taking it in the fire —
In the fire she is making a poem entirely out of sticks on fire and it goes like this
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
–