Overview

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?

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Reviews

""Natalya Sukhonos's poems are as thoroughly bathed in the blazing sunlight of her native Odesa as are the city's ornate façades. Her lines reflect its glow even when they focus on the pitch dark terror of war. There is a vibrancy to these lyrics, a survivor's resiliency--the grit of a poet who has found a way to flourish on foreign soil. Come and warm yourselves by ""the flame of [lives] smoldering still,"" despite it all."" --Boris Dralyuk, author of My Hollywood and Other Poems ""Sukhonos offers us glimpses into 'gray, curtained chambers' of homes long lost--words ebbing at the edges of languages, cities abandoned, parental bodies that slowly vanish under the varnish of memory. Haunting, filled with sweetness, these poems unfold out of the limelight. Dream-like, the collection flickers and glows."" --Oksana Maksymchuk, author of Still City: Diary of An Invasion ""Sunlight Trapped in Stone is a book of witness, of grief and healing, of arrivals and departures and tremendous love. Engaging with other texts, voices and histories, this book reckons with the war in Ukraine, the pandemic, immigration, grief for the dead and for the historical and ongoing traumas of war. At the same time, Sunlight Trapped in Stone locates resilience and hope in the natural world and joy in the buoy of family. Sonically gorgeous, Natalya Sukhonos' collection is a necessary salve for these troubled times."" --Sarah Giragosian, author of Queer Fish, The Death Spiral, and Mother Octopus ""In Sunlight Trapped in Stone, Natalya Sukhonos unflinchingly conveys the experience of Ukrainian displacement, war, and family rupture. Her poems move between Soviet-era Odesa, occupied Bucha, immigrant New York, and wartime Kyiv, drawing on testimonials, archival memory, and personal loss. Whether recounting a grandfather's survival of the Holodomor, a mother's death from cancer, or a child's resilience in diaspora, she crafts poems of great formal variety, emotional impact, and political urgency."" --Alex Averbuch, author of Furious Harvests, Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky

""Natalya Sukhonos's poems are as thoroughly bathed in the blazing sunlight of her native Odesa as are the city's ornate façades. Her lines reflect its glow even when they focus on the pitch dark terror of war. There is a vibrancy to these lyrics, a survivor's resiliency--the grit of a poet who has found a way to flourish on foreign soil. Come and warm yourselves by ""the flame of [lives] smoldering still,"" despite it all."" --Boris Dralyuk, author of My Hollywood and Other Poems

Author Information

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.

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