Northshire Saratoga: Poetry reading with Lucyna Prostko - House of Wandering - and Natalya Sukhonos - Sunlight Trapped in Stone

Polish-American poet Lucyna Prostko and Ukrainian-American poet Natalya Sukhonos will share poems from their latest collections. Prostko’s work engages narratives of identity at the intersection of history and culture, reflecting the divided identities of an immigrant self. Sukhonos’s collection is a kaleidoscopic journey through memory and the experience of immigration.

Lucyna Prostko — House of Wandering

House of Wandering explores identity, home, memory, and the divided identities of an immigrant self. A tribute to the poets’ origins in northeastern Poland, the collection explores storytelling, trauma, nostalgia, loss, and hope.

“House of Wandering dazzles in its fearless reckoning with collective trauma, with immigration, with visible and invisible domains, and with the kin and community that people the speaker’s world.” —Sarah Giragosian, author of Queer Fish, The Death Spiral, and Mother Octopus

Natalya Sukhonos — Sunlight Trapped in Stone

Journeying into the speaker’s immigrant past and the stories of others, the poems wander through war-torn Ukraine, Guadalajara, and Halifax during World War II. They bring together voices of immigrants, refugees, lovers, children, parents, and grandparents, held in the amber of memory.

“Whether recounting a grandfather’s survival of the Holodomor, a mother’s death from cancer, or a child’s resilience in diaspora, (Sukhonos) crafts poems of great formal variety, emotional impact, and political urgency.” —Alex Averbuch, author of Furious Harvests

Lucyna Prostko was born in Poland and came to New York City at age 19. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, where she was awarded the New York Times Fellowship, and a PhD in English from the University at Albany. Her poetry has appeared in journals, anthologies, and online publications. Her first collection, Infinite Beginnings, won the Bright Hill Press poetry book competition.

A native of Odesa, Ukraine, Natalya Sukhonos speaks Russian, English, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard and is a poet, scholar, and teacher. Her books include Parachute (2016) and A Stranger Home (2020).