Julija Cimafiejeva (Belarus), Tadeusz Dąbrowski (Poland), José Luís Peixoto (Portugal), Lyuba Yakimchuk (Ukraine)

Guests:
Julija Cimafiejeva (Belarus)
Tadeusz Dąbrowski (Poland)
José Luís Peixoto (Portugal)
Lyuba Yakimchuk (Ukraine)

Moderator:
Iulian Fruntașu (Republic of Moldova)

Actors:
Cătălina Balan
Alexandra Botnaru
Ilinca Munteanu
Victor Popov

This poetry evening brings together four outstanding European poets to present a selection of their work to the audience in Chișinău. Julija Cimafiejeva (Belarus/ Germany) combines personal experience and collective history in her poetry, giving poetic voice in particular to experiences of political violence, exile and life in present-day Belarus. Tadeusz Dąbrowski (Poland)is one of the most internationally acclaimed Polish poets of his generation; his often concise, philosophically grounded poems have been translated into more than thirty languages. José Luís Peixoto (Portugal) is a novelist, playwright and poet and one of the distinctive voices of contemporary Portuguese literature; his poetry has also received considerable international recognition. Lyuba Yakimchuk (Ukraine) is an internationally acclaimed Ukrainian poet whose formally daring work explores how war and displacement fracture language, memory, and a sense of home; translated into nearly thirty languages, her poetry reached the Grammy Awards stage in 2022. . – 

Julia Cimafieva combines poetic and documentary forms, personal memory and history. Since 2014 she has published five poetry collections and has become one of the key voices of her generation. In 2020 she left Belarus for political reasons together with her husband, the writer Alhierd Bacharevič, and lived in exile in several European cities. Since 2025, they have been living in Berlin.

Lyuba Yakimchuk was born in Pervomaisk near Luhansk and currently lives in Kyiv. Her poems have been translated into more than twenty languages. After the Russian invasion in 2022, she published Letter from Kyiv, describing how war transforms language. Her cycle Apricots of Donbas (2015) brings together poems written during the early years of the war, including her family’s flight from Luhansk.

Tadeusz Dąbrowski writes and reads in diverse contexts, from Gdańsk to Zurich or Manhattan. His poems address love, everyday life and political conflict, as well as the influence of Catholic heritage, combining precision of language with close observation.

José Luís Peixoto is the author of novels, poetry, plays, travel writing and columns. He has received numerous awards, including the Prémio José Saramago. Since 2001 he has also published poetry collections such as A Criança em Ruínas, A Casa, a Escuridão and Gaveta de Papéis.