A poetry collection where personal is inevitably political and ecological, Motherfield is a poet's insistence on self-determination in authoritarian, patriarchal Belarus. Julia Cimafiejeva was born in an area of rural Belarus that became a Chernobyl zone when she was a child. The book opens with a poet's diary that records the course of violence unfolding in Belarus since the 2020 presidential election. It paints an intimate portrait of the poet's struggle with fear, despair, and guilt as she goes to protests, escapes police, longs for readership, learns about the detention of family and friends, and ultimately chooses life in exile. But can she really escape the contaminated farmlands of her youth and her impure Belarusian mother tongue? Can she really escape the radiation of her motherfield? This is the first collection of Julia Cimafiejeva's poetry in English, prepared by a team of co-translators and poets Valzhyna Mort and Hanif Abdurraqib.

Motherfield: Poems & Belarusian Protest Diary

Literature & Fiction

Cimafiejeva, Julia

Essays & Correspondence

Phoneme Media

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cimafiejeva, Julia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cimafiejeva, Julia

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cimafiejeva, Julia. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Motherfield: Poems & Belarusian Protest Diary