Overview

Hutsulka, the 2025 Silent River Poetry Prize Finalist by Nicole Yurcaba, is a fierce and intimate sequence of odes written in the shadow of war. Rooted in ancestral memory and shaped by present-day events, these poems confront betrayal, displacement, and longing with unflinching hope.

Full Product Details

9798989660742

Table of Contents

Reviews

Nicole Yurcaba's poems stun with unremitting authenticity and power - a poet's defiant response to the missiles that continually explode over her beloved ancestral homeland. Relationships fray and dissolve as the dark shadow of Russia's brutal war on Ukraine looms throughout this unflinching collection of richly textured odes. Its consequences are personal, haunting, heartbreaking: ""There is a war/no one but our people remembers. It disappeared/from headlines like youth disappearing from your eyes/on the day a missile struck your university, a museum, a theater sheltering children."" In this stellar book, identity and inherited grief are both weighty and a call to arms. Immense personal loss is juxtaposed with acts of resilience and poems bear witness to those forgotten, terrorized, killed. And yet amid the darkness lies the enduring strength of ancestral ties and an unwavering sense of self. Hutsulka is magnificent and masterful - intense and intimate. - Ksenia Rychtycka, author of A Sky Full of Wings ""These poems crackle with energy and blaze beacon-bright. Nicole Yurcaba protests complacency and cruelty on both the small scale of individual relationships and the large scale of invasion and war. These are poems of anger and mourning, but they are also full of fierce love despite betrayal."" - Steven Knepper, Editor, New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry

Author Information

Nicole Yurcaba (Нікола Юрцаба) is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin. Her poems and reviews have appeared in ""Appalachian Heritage,"" ""Atlanta Review,"" ""Poetry Ireland Review,"" ""The Belfast Review,"" ""Abridged,"" ""Seneca Review,"" ""New Eastern Europe,"" ""Euromaidan Press,"" ""Chytomo,"" and ""The New Voice of Ukraine."" Nicole holds an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University, teaches poetry workshops for Southern New Hampshire University, and is the Humanities Coordinator at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College. She also serves as a guest book reviewer for ""New Eastern Europe,"" ""Tupelo Quarterly,"" ""Colorado Review,"" and ""Southern Review of Books."" Her poetry collection, ""The Pale Goth"" (2023), is available from Alien Buddha Press and her chapbook Have Your Eyes is available from Dancing Girl Press (2025).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available