Motherfield

Book excerpt: A poetry collection where personal is inevitably political and ecological, Motherfield is a poet’s insistence on self-determination in authoritarian, patriarchal Belarus. Julia Cimafiejeva was born in an area of rural Belarus that became a Chernobyl zone during her childhood. The book opens with a poet’s diary recording the course of violence unfolding in Belarus since its 2020 presidential election. Motherfield paints an intimate portrait of the poet’s struggle with fear, despair, and guilt as she goes to protests, escapes police, longs for readership, learns about the detention of family and friends, and ultimately chooses life in exile. But can she really escape the contaminated farmlands of her youth and her Belarusian mother tongue? Can she escape the radiation of her motherfield? This is the first collection of Julia Cimafiejeva’s poetry in English, prepared by cotranslators and poets Valzhyna Mort and Hanif Abdurraqib.