About the Work by Ian Ross Singleton

Please allow me to talk at length about the details of the growth, no pun intended, of my translation of “Cathedral Square, Odesa” by Galina Itskovich. There’s a contrast here between the grand size of the cathedral and this small plot, “садик,” or “patch” where it used to be. This last word landed in place late in the process. Trading “patch” for “plot,” despite the idea of a story or “plot” which Itskovich suggests about herself at the end, was one way of representing this contrast in the English. While “plot” isn’t necessarily any larger than “patch” in my imagination, “patch” maps the childhood terrain trod by this poem. Earlier, in the fourth line, the word has the same meaning but is used in a different idiomatic way for something even smaller than the “patch” above. However, in editing, “болячки” changed into “burls.” I reached out to Itskovich to ask about what kind of trees these were and whether the болячки were more like open wounds or like tumors, the latter justifying the use of the word “burl” in English. Itskovich responded by letting me know that these were the famous plane trees of Odesa, whose bark falls off easily, even earning them the nickname of “бесстыдницы” (shameless ones) according to the poet Natalya Sukhonos, also from Odesa. And the phrase “bald patches” had also been something idiomatic in English but related to a later word in a different phrase of the sentence: “плешивость.” So the болячки became blisters after the Turkoslavia editors suggested “pocks,” part of a word that I later used with “pockmarks,” again to refer to these wounds on the tree but to make sure they weren’t understood incorrectly as burls or growths swelling off of the tree bark. The “saplings” are balding, already demonstrating an irony fitting for this square where the large cathedral, a place of spiritual growth destroyed (and later rebuilt), becomes a garden patch, a place of physical growth, before that is destroyed to rebuild the cathedral. In addition, the baldness of saplings gives the sense of the square’s Soviet-era dereliction, that such a grandiose place became a garden patch—ironically more meaningful perhaps than the cathedral ever was, at least for this speaker.

In the fifth line, “шли на гулянье попарно” is a reference to Boris Pasternak’s “Август,” according to Itskovich, so after some revisions, the word “procession” came into the translation to give readers the sense of a funeral procession. 

If the poem is about childhood and rhymes, then I try to keep some rhyme in it. And even if it’s not, I try to follow the scheme of the original. There is also similarity with other poetic techniques of Itskovich, such as the alliteration in line 14. As a translator, I’ve evolved over time to be less forceful with rhymes, often being happy to use a slant rhyme such as in line 16, especially if it can allow for alliteration. Too tightly rhyming words, even if the rhyme works well, can give the translation too childish a sound, something so many English-language poetry readers seem so much to resent. Other times I rhyme internally, such as in line 25. But the rhyme fades as in the original.

Lines 7, 8, and 9 of the second poem published here keep an alliterative quality that was there in the beginning with the Latin prefix “ex-” giving the sense of being outside of this newer Odesa. Here an attempt at rhyme seemed like it would go against the cynical movement of the poem, the disintegration of what was once idealized. The poem reminds me of the joke of the Odesan who has returned, throwing his arms up and looking out, yelling, “Odesa, it’s been so long, I don’t recognize you!” Then, looking down at the ground, he says, more quietly, “I recognize you.”

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GALINA ITSKOVICH, psychotherapist and lecturer, holds a Master’s in social work from Hunter College (CUNY). Her work recently appeared in Nashville Review, Poet Lore, Asymptote, EastWest Literary Forum, Tint, as well as in Russophone journals. She authored one book of poetry and a book of travel essays. A non-fiction work about emotional support during the Ukrainian war is still seeking a publisher. Her work is translated into English, Spanish, and Ukrainian.

IAN ROSS SINGLETON is a writer and a translator of literature from the Russian and Ukrainian languages. He teaches Writing and Critical Inquiry at SUNY Albany. His debut novel Two Big Differences, about the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, came out in 2021 and has been called a “masterpiece” by Russian writer in exile Dmitry Bykov. Two of his translations from Russian, “Odesa Accent” by Galina Itskovich and “Being Famous” by Boris Pasternak, were longlisted for the 2026 Deep Vellum Best Literary Translations. His translations of Ukrainian poets Antonina Tymchenko, Natalka Marynchak, and Iryna Ivanchenko have been or are being published by various presses. He is currently translating the 1928 novel The Shipwright by Yuri Yanovsky for Harvard University Press.