Sunlight Trapped in Stone

Journeying into the speaker’ s immigrant past as well as the stories of others, we wander in the fields of war-torn Ukraine, the stones of Guadalajara, and the frigid shores of Halifax during World War II. Roaming through rain-soaked forests, treacherous deserts, and the whimsical architecture of childhood, we hear voices of immigrants, refugees, and lovers, children yet unborn and those sprinting to their next adventures, mothers and fathers, grandparents both wise and defeated, adolescents luminous with wonder and paralyzed by their own bodies. How does poetry cradle a sea of voices? Ensconced in the amber of memory, how do they emerge full-blooded and speak to us with urgency?

A native of Odesa, Ukraine, Natalya Sukhonos is multilingual, speaking Russian, English, as well as Ukrainian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. Natalya is a poet, scholar, and teacher deeply committed to the power of language to uplift, inspire, and defamiliarize us from the ordinary. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2015 and 2020 and the Best New Poets Anthology of 2015, Natalya came out with Parachute in 2016 (Kelsay Books of Aldrich Press) and A Stranger Home (Moon Pie Press) in 2020.