We were just putting finishing touches on this Spring 2022 issue of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices when Russian military forces invaded Ukraine. It’s hard to know what to do when it feels like tectonic social forces are coming unhinged around the globe, but we felt we could at least shine a small spotlight on our poets who have an intimate knowledge of Ukraine, to stand in solidarity with that beleaguered country. So we’re republishing poems by two Ukrainian-American poets from past issues, Dzvinia Orlowsky and Oksana Maksymchuk. And our Guest Poetry Editor Sam Cha has curated a wonderful set of poems by Masha Deykute, a poet who was raised in Russia by Ukrainian and Lithuanian parents. All of these poems speak to the kind of resilience and courage we now see being brandished by the Ukrainians in the face of this cruel, overwhelming onslaught. Let’s stand with them, and with repressed people the world over.
-Robbie Gamble
Robbie Gamble’s essays have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Pangyrus, Pithead Chapel, Under the Gum Tree and Tahoma Literary Review. He was a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Summer Writers Workshop. He worked many years as a nurse practitioner caring for homeless people in Boston, and now divides his time between Massachusetts and Vermont.
