A Radical Change in the Belavieža Cultural Tradition: The Inventive and Provocative Verse of Viktar Siamaška

Abstract

The poetry of Viktar Siamaška brings a strong and radically new contribution to the literary heritage of the Bielavieža group of Belarusian writers in eastern Poland. His mainly short, even minimalist, verses strike fresh and unconventional notes, rich in wordplay, euphony, anaphora and palindromes in all the themes he tackles, such as family, ageing and death, religion (particularly his Catholic faith), urban and rural life, the latter including many fantastic, personified images; his view of the city is dyspeptic from Moscow to Paris with Miensk in the centre. Musician and journalist as well as avant-garde poet, his five books to date (2010–2023) are both challenging and stimulating. Adventurous in form on the page, their lexical range is broad, not least in the use of non-standard, previously taboo words. A whole study could be made of Siamaška’s fantastic imagery and metaphoric structures, but the present study is devoted only to an overall picture of his poetic achievement to date.