Kostiantyn Dorošenko / Tie2.lt

On June 3, a creative meeting with Ukrainian poet Vitalii Bilozir will take place at the Klaipėda Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library. He is a recipient of the President of Ukraine scholarship for young artists. At just 23 years old, he has already authored three poetry collections and edited a poetry anthology, and is a laureate of the Pavlo Tychyna All-Ukrainian Prize as well as the Oles Honchar Ukraine–Germany Prize. His poems have been translated into English, Polish, and Azerbaijani.

Vitalii Bilozir combines his creative work with employment at the Lesya Ukrainka Kyiv Public Library. He is also a co-founder of the charitable foundation “Soft Power,” which helps libraries in Ukraine’s frontline regions acquire books and computers. In 2023, the poet joined the “Visible Library” project implemented in correctional facilities, initiating the program “Living Ukrainian Language.” This educational and creative platform is aimed at developing linguistic and cultural self-awareness among inmates. The program includes Ukrainian language courses, seminars, practical workshops, art therapy modules, and discussion clubs.

This year you are visiting Lithuania for the second time. It was Lithuania that became your first trip abroad. Just like me – back in 1982. It was the final period of the Soviet Union, when, officially, we all belonged to that state. But in Lithuania I discovered a completely different world – Europe, which until then I could only read about in literature or see in films. For a ten-year-old boy from Kyiv, there were countless impressions: people dressed differently, films shown in cinemas in Lithuanian, believers kneeling as they climbed the stairs to the Gate of Dawn image of the Mother of God, the M. K. Čiurlionis Museum with its mystical worlds and its branch – the Devil’s Museum. And what impressed you the most?

On my first visit to Vilnius last year, my main goal was to learn about the work of local libraries and their practices. However, I devoted most of the trip to something entirely different – I wandered the city every day, which felt strangely familiar to me. In a way, this feeling was reinforced by the legacy of Soviet architecture. But there was also another, very important, almost mystical aspect of this experience for me.

My hometown, Zhashkiv, once belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. At that time, Lithuania and we were part of a single large civilizational space. Therefore, in this country I feel a return to shared roots that were once artificially severed by imperial and Soviet narratives. It is a feeling of a European home – a home that has always rightfully belonged to us, but which had to be rediscovered.

In my opinion, it is always worth beginning acquaintance with a city through art, because no other approach reveals so clearly the experience, stories, and beliefs through which modern people live. The historic part of Vilnius is full of interesting places, so my wandering was rather spontaneous and allowed me to open any doors I came across.

One of the most striking impressions was the exhibition “Two Generations / Two Lines,” where works by father and daughter – Virginijus Kašinskas and Martyna Kašinskaitė – were presented at the Vidmantas Martikonis gallery-museum. Virginijus’s works are mostly graphic pieces with biblical, family, and zoological themes, while his daughter creates animation. Her works dealt with the theme of violence. I still vividly remember a frame from the animated film Aurora’s Dawn, in which the barrel of a gun is pointed at a mother and her two children. The work tells the story of Aurora Mardiganian and the genocide of the Armenian people.

The exhibition by Beatričė Mockevičiūtė also made a strong impression. The artist focuses on optical perception and urban hydrological research, starting from the traffic flow of streets that still trace the bends of a river that once flowed there. The flickering headlights of constantly moving cars are juxtaposed with the human gaze. That gaze, like the street itself, reflects the instability of our time, but at the same time carries the promise never to look away.

When I was already heading toward the station with my suitcase, crossing Cathedral Square, I unexpectedly came across a national military parade. There, contemporary military power merged with knights wearing authentic armor from the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, emphasizing the continuity of eras and the great respect Lithuanians have for their roots.

However, the most important moment of this event was when the Lithuanian military and the entire gathered community separately honored the memory of those who fell in the current war for Ukraine’s independence. It was a sign of solidarity and respect for our shared history and the centuries-long struggle for freedom.

It’s not surprising that you mention contemporary art exhibitions. Even before the publication of your first book, you were sharing your poetry on social media, illustrating it with works of visual art. The cover of your collection “Paper Boy”features a work by Kyrylo Protsenko. He was a distinctive artist from the “Paris Commune” circle – an informal group that had a major influence on the formation of contemporary Ukrainian art. The book “Porcelain Apple” became a poetic and artistic co-creation with painter Andrii Sanitskyi. How do you assess the possibilities of interaction between poetry and visual art?

For me, the interaction between word and image is not only natural but also vitally necessary. Contemporary poetry can no longer afford to remain hermetic and confined to a purely textual space. We live in times when linear text alone is often insufficient to convey the full scale of our reality. Therefore, the artistic gesture becomes an opportunity for literature to give the word a physical body, weight, and spatial dimension.

Speaking about the cover of “Paper Boy” with Kyrylo Protsenko’s work, for me it is a conscious dialogue with the aesthetics of the “Paris Commune” circle and its uncompromising spirit. Meanwhile, the collaboration with Andrii Sanitskyi in creating “Porcelain Apple” became a true synesthetic experience – Sanitskyi’s conceptual artistic language helped materialize the very nature of my contemporary poetry.

I tried to transfer this philosophy of synergy from book design into a living physical space when, in 2023, I became curator of the anthology “Gentle Wave” (“Nizhnyi val”) at the Ukrainian-Danish Youth House. In Kyiv, permeated by the tension of war, the traditional format of literary readings seemed too archaic, insufficiently engaging for audiences, and unable to convey the scale of authors’ internal transformations. Therefore, we turned the presentation into a full-fledged multimedia exhibition.

Young artists displayed their collages, photographs, graphics, and paintings alongside texts, creating a unified artistic landscape. The contemporary author thinks in multimedia terms. They consciously break down the boundaries between closed artistic fields and genres, creating an intellectual and emotional ecosystem in which the image helps decode the author’s hidden subtext, while poetry becomes a conceptual solution to a visual work. This is our way of speaking simultaneously about trauma and beauty, using all available senses.

The presentation of your first poetry book took place in 2022 – the same year as the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Together with poet and cultural scholar Vano Krüger, you compiled the anthology “Gentle Wave”, featuring poets under the age of 25. How does the war affect your and your peers’ creative work? Can we speak about certain tendencies characteristic of your generation?

The longer this war continues, the harder it becomes to speak about the life-giving power of art in the classical, exalted sense in which it was once described in Orphic odes. Our generation – those whose youth and maturation coincided with the early 21st century – has faced the devastating forces of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse with courage and dignity: both the pandemic and the war. Our future, which before the full-scale invasion seemed to depend solely on us, now rests on our unity.

Both the exhibition “Manifestation. First Attempt” at the Ukrainian-Danish Youth House and the anthology “Gentle Wave” itself were our attempt to capture an important truth: the new generation wants to experience and perceive art as something alive, while we ourselves are still alive. When the primary focus shifts to the very foundations of existence, creativity does not collapse – paradoxically, it purifies itself. Art, freed from pragmatic or ideological constraints, acquires a deeper rhetoric and impact.

By compiling “Gentle Wave,” we sought to show that in this new reality, earlier categories have shifted. Now love is complemented by war, silence by emptiness, and tenderness by freedom. For our generation, freedom has lost the features of earlier moralizing frameworks or the hidden opposition between private and public life. It has become a space governed by harmony and solidarity. It is precisely these ideals of freedom, as a key to the gates of a better world, that are carried in the work of the 35 authors included in the anthology.

It is difficult to define us as a unified or spontaneous phenomenon – each poet is unique and unlike the others. They do not seek direct dialogue with one another, nor do they need to. Their presence in the book is a metamorphosis of time itself, a synthesis of spatial reflection and pure emotion.

The visual manifesto of this altered and exposed world became a work by the remarkable artist Kateryna Lisovenko from the project “I Cannot Exist Without You,” which we chose for the anthology cover. Lisovenko subtly explores the connections between ideology, culture, and the image of the victim. Violence in her works is not poster-like – it is metaphysical and profound. Her visual language resonates perfectly with the poetic content of the book: it shows that even when a gun is pointed at us, we refuse to remain merely powerless victims.

Lisovenko’s cover reflects the most important tendency of our generation – the ability to preserve inner tenderness and fragility even in the face of missile strikes, transforming pain into an undeniable testimony of our cultural existence.

You are a laureate of the Oles Honchar and Pavlo Tychyna literary prizes. What is most important to you in the work of these figures?

For me, these awards are very clear markers of artistic responsibility and the continuity of tradition. In the work of Oles Honchar, I am fascinated by the scale of his epic thinking, his ability to maintain a high aesthetic standard, and to defend the independence of the Ukrainian word even under the strongest ideological pressures.

Pavlo Tychyna is, for me, the true architect of our linguistic space. The polyphony of his early collection “Sonnets of the Sun”, its cosmic musicality, and the unique texture of his verse remain my internal tuning fork and a conscious reference point in my work with language.

This connection to the literary canon reveals itself to me not through textbooks, but through direct dialogue with contemporary poets, especially Petro Midyanka, a laureate of the Shevchenko Prize. His deep and insightful foreword to my poetry collection once became the most important act of professional recognition and creative blessing. Over time, our creative synergy has grown into long-term collaboration at the Lesya Ukrainka Public Library, where we have jointly organized a series of significant literary evenings dedicated to his work.

Libraries are not usually associated with a particularly youthful temperament. What attracted you to the Lesya Ukrainka Public Library? How is it developing?

The stereotype of a library as a closed, silent archive for older people has long become outdated. For me, the Lesya Ukrainka Public Library has become a space of extraordinary energy – a place where real cultural policy is shaped and where social transformation takes place. I was drawn to its openness to experimentation, its freedom of action, and its understanding that a modern library is, above all, an open intellectual hub, a living space for community interaction and for nurturing our shared identity.

We are developing the library as a dynamic institution that does not wait for the reader, but goes out to meet them, crossing the boundaries of its physical walls. The clearest and most significant embodiment of this philosophy is the “Bibliobus” project, initiated by the library’s director Olha Romaniuk and implemented through the “Soft Power” charitable foundation.

It is a bus equipped with autonomous power systems, serving various locations in Kyiv – from remote districts and hospitals to rehabilitation centers for our defenders. It provides people not only with access to literature, but also with internet, warmth, and a space for psychological respite.

In developing library strategies, the experience of Lithuania is invaluable to us. Baltic colleagues, especially the team of the Vilnius City Public Library led by Rima Gražienė and Simona Žilienė, were among the first in Europe to show how a library network with a post-Soviet legacy can be transformed into a space for civic engagement, social inclusion, and community strengthening in times of crisis.

Lithuania teaches us mobility, technological advancement, and an uncompromising focus on human needs. Soon, as part of an internship program organized by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, I will visit the Klaipėda Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library, led by Laura Šimkevičė. We are currently expanding and adapting this experience to Ukrainian realities.