New residents in Krakow – ICORN city of writers 07.02.2022

Uladzimir Nyaklyayew – born in 1946 in Smarhon, Grodno Region, a Belarusian poet, novelist and socio-political activist. Author of novels, historical dramas and several poetry volumes, the winner of the prestigious prize of Kurt-Tucholsky. His books have been translated into Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Swedish and Finnish. He worked as a telegraphist in Siberia and Far East, as well as in a television studio in Minsk as a radio technician. As a journalist, he worked with the newspaper “Znamia Junosti” and the bulletin “Theater Minsk”, and was editor of the literary and dramatic programs of Belarusian television. He was the editor-in-chief of the contemporary literature monthly “Krynica” (“Spring”; 1986-1997), editor-in-chief of the cultural weekly “Litaratura i Mastatstva” (“Literature and Art”; 1998), President of the Union of Belarusian Writers (1999-2001) and President of the Belarusian PEN-Club (2005-2009). In 2012, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize by the Belarusian PEN Center and the Belarusian Union of Writers.
In 1999, he was forced to leave Belarus for political reasons. He lived and worked in Poland and Finland. He returned to Minsk in 2001. In 2010, he ran in presidential elections as an independent candidate. On the election day, he was severely beaten by a special police unit and subsequently kidnapped from the hospital and arrested. Amnesty International recognized Uladzimir Nyaklyayew as a prisoner of conscience.
Uladzimir Nyaklyayew is the winner of almost all Belarusian literary prizes, including the Yanka Kupala State Prize, independent prizes, including the Jerzy Giedroyc Award and Natalia Arsenieva Award, as well as international awards: Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis, Bronisław Geremek Prize, Mihai Eminescu Award, and others.

In 2021, he wrote a novel about life in the Soviet Union, Ognista Gehenna. In Belarus, the name of Uladzimir Nyaklyayew is prohibited. He is not mentioned in the media, and his books are not published. The novel “Hej Ben Hinom” was published and presented in Poland and Lithuania.

The Belarusian revolution of 2020 should have won. There were much more people and more power on its side than on the side of the regime. But it failed. Why? I try to answer this question in my new novel, which I am writing in Krakow, where I have been invited to stay by the Mayor of the City, under the ICORN program – an international network of cities offering refuge to writers from countries where they cannot live and create freely. All the necessary conditions for my work have been ensured, for which I would like to thank Krakow and Villa Decius. The new novel is difficult for me to write because everything is still very close and painful. Thousands of innocent people, including many of my close friends, are in prison. Even more of them have been forced to emigrate. I met them in Poland and Lithuania during the presentation of my last novel “Ognista gehenna”. They told me their tragic stories with tears in their eyes: the loss of work, home, friends, family – everything they had. It is not just the drama of individual people, it is a national disaster, the reason for which I try to understand when working on my new novel.
Why did the revolution not succeed? Here is one answer. More than 30 years ago, in 1990, Belarus achieved independence. Without any fight – like a gift from God. And how did the Belarusians use this gift? They didn’t. They didn’t even comprehend what God gave them. The free independence has hardly influenced national awareness; it has not reinforced it. The gift proved to be unnecessary. And, behold, after thirty years God said: enough! If you achieve freedom without a fight, you will deal with it just as you did with independence. It will prove to be unnecessary. That is why you will walk the path of fighting for freedom to understand what it means – to understand its value.  Nothing happens in life just by accident. Nothing happens without a reason. Everything – big and small – has some meaning. The revolution changed our awareness – God tested us. In the form of a road to freedom. And this is what the novel will be about, - said Uladzimir Nyaklyayew.

Andrei Khadanovich – poet, translator of poetry, literary critic, essayist. Born on February 13, 1973 in Minsk. In 1995, he graduated from the philological department of the Belarusian State University, where he would then give lectures on the history of French literature for a long time. He taught in the famous Belarusian High School in Minsk. He conducted translation workshops in the Belarusian College and in the Belarusian PEN Club.
His poems have been translated into English, Czech, Spanish, Lithuanian, German, Slovak, Slovenian and Russian. He is a member of the Union of Belarusian Writers and the Belarusian PEN Club, and since 2021 also a member of the Polish PEN Club. He translated, sang and recorded the album “Mury” by Jacek Kaczmarski in Belarusian. His version of the title track has become an unofficial anthem of the Belarusian opposition.
He translated poetry from English (Emily Dickinson, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, and others), Russian (Osip Mandelstam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Iosif Brodsky, Gennadiy Aygi), Ukrainian (Yurii Andrukhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, and others), French (Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Guillaume Apollinaire, and others) and Polish (Mickiewicz, Norwid, Fredro, Gałczyński, Miłosz, Szymborska, Herbert, Twardowski, Krynicki, Lipska, Zadura, and others). For his translations of Polish literature, he received the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture and the Polish PEN Club Award, and for his translations of Charles Baudelaire, he was honored with the Carlos Sherman Prize.
He translated, sang and recorded the album “Mury” ("The Walls") by Jacek Kaczmarski in Belarusian. His version of the title track has become an unofficial anthem of the Belarusian opposition.

The first month in Krakow has already shown that I was not wrong in my choice of city. It is important to live where there is no language barrier, where people react to the world more or less like you, cry and laugh in the same situations as you do. I have visited Krakow very often and I have many friends here, both among Poles and Belarusians, who, like me, had to leave Belarus. In July, I presented my book here and participated in the Miłosz Festival. Today, I have great conditions for my work in Villa Decius, and I have already written some of my own texts here, as well as translated in a few weeks a great poem by Moyshe Kulbak entitled “Raysn”
(“Belarus”). I plan to complete here a new book of my own poems that I started writing in August 2020, after the outbreak of our protests and terrible repressions, and also to work – as it is an important jubilee – on the Belarusian translation of “Ballads and Romances” by Mickiewicz. I also hope to translate something from contemporary Polish poetry. Maybe even some poet from Krakow, - says Andrei Khadanovich about his stay in Krakow as part of the ICORN program.