Svetlana Ischenko


Svetlana Viktorivna Ischenko — poet, translator, stage actress, teacher, artist.
She is a member of The Ukrainian Writers’ Association and The National Writers' Union of Ukraine.
WWW svetlanaischenko.blogspot...

Biography

Svetlana Ischenko was born on July 30, 1969, in Mykolaiv, in the steppe region of the south of Ukraine.
She graduated from Mykolaiv public school number 38. Svetlana pursued her childhood love of music at the Mykolaiv Rimsky-Korsakov Music School, and graduated in piano in 1986. She received a College Diploma in Acting, Stage Directing and Visual Art from the Mykolaiv State College of Culture in 1988. She later attended the Mykolaiv Branch of the Kyiv State University of Culture and Arts and received a BA in Recreation Management and Pedagogy in 1998.
For several years, Ischenko was a stage actress at the Mykolaiv Ukrainian Theatre of Drama and Musical Comedy. She played a number of significant characters from classic Ukrainian and European plays, among them Marusia, Catherine, Motrya, Yaryna, Ryna, Prince, Julie, and Countess Rosine. Svetlana also created many poetic texts and songs for thematic programs, plays and musical shows for the Mykolaiv Ukrainian Theatre of Drama and Musical Comedy.
A number of Ukrainian composers and singers have created songs using Ischenko's poetry for lyrics—Viktor Ures, Viktor Piatygorsky, Oleksandr Nezhyhai, Olena Nikishenko, Oleksandr Honcharenko, Anna Oliynykova, and others.
In 2001, Ischenko immigrated to Canada. She lives in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Svetlana continues to keep in close contact with Ukraine. She writes in Ukrainian and English. Her literary achievement includes translations. Svetlana Ischenko is a co-translator of English versions of poetry by Dmytro Kremin, winner of the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian National Literary Prize.
Ischenko's field of work in Canada is creating and teaching children's programs in visual arts, ballet, creative dance, jazz, hip-hop, and musical theatre at Recreational Centres in North Vancouver. She has given poetry readings at the Vancouver Public Library in the “World Poetry Reading Series” and radio interviews on Vancouver's Co-op Radio as well as Voice of America in the U.S.

Publications

Ischenko's poems were first published in the Mykolaiv regional newspaper The Soviet Prybuzhia on December 14, 1991.
Svetlana's literary work has appeared widely in a variety of publications in Ukraine, including magazines such as Dzvin, Kyiv, Gorozhanin, Dyvoslovo, Art-Line, Vitchyzna, Kurier Kryvbasu, and Vezha, almanacs such as Borviy, Buzsky Gard, and Osvityanski vitryla, and in poetry anthologies such as Pochatky and The Mykolaiv Oberih.
Svetlana's poems have also been published in Canadian literary magazines such as The Antigonish Review, Lichen, Event, and in poetic anthologies such as From This New World and Che Wach Choe—Let the Delirium Begin.
Ischenko's co-translations of the poetry of Dmytro Kremin, winner of the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian National Literary Prize, have appeared in well-known literary magazines such as London Magazine, Prism International, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, in the trilingual collection Two Shores and in the book Poems From The Scythian Wild Field -- a selection of the poetry of Dmytro Kremin translated into English by Svetlana Ischenko and Russell Thornton

Books of poetry

  • 1995 Chorals of the Earth and Sky, including A Crane’s Cry, a dramatic play based on the novel by Roman Ivanychuk
  • 1998 B-Sharp
  • 2005 In the Mornings I Find a Crane’s Feathers in My Damp Braids
  • 2019 The Trees Have Flown Up In Couples
  • 2024 ''Nucleus: A Poet's Lyrical Journey From Ukraine To Canada''

Works of translation

;From Ukrainian into English
  • Dmytro Kremin The Horse Constellation, The Lost Manuscript, Don Quixote From the Estuary, The Tower of Pisa, The Tendra Mustungs' Odyssey, Wild Honey, A Church in the Middle of the Universe, Christmas in Bohopil, The Hunt For the Wild Boar.Poems From The Scythian Wild Field -- a selection of the poetry of Dmytro Kremin translated into English by Svetlana Ischenko and Russell Thornton
  • Dmytro Kremin The Lost Manuscript
;From Russian into Ukrainian
  • Sergei Yesenin Persian Motives in the book B-Sharp
  • Alexandr Pushkin To the Fountain of the Bakhchisaray Palace in the book The Trees Have Flown Up In Couples
  • Larisa Маtveyevа in the book The Trees Have Flown Up In Couples
;From English into Ukrainian
  • Seven Canadian poets in translation in Variations on the Word Love: Anthology of Canadian Poets
  • ''Canadian Poetry translated by Svetlana Ischenko''

Awards

in Ukraine: The New Names of Ukraine and The Golden Harp, 1995in Canada: Burnaby Writers’ Society Poetry Contest, 2003in Israel: The Ivan Koshelivets International Literary Prize, 2013in Ukraine: in Ukraine:

Visual Art displayed