Foto: Alhierd Bacharevič.
Julia Cimafiejeva, whose selection of poems from the collection Blutkreislauf is featured in the anthology Dobro smo. A vi?, answered a few flash questions.
Could you describe yourself in 3 words?
Belarusian exiled (female) poet.
Without summarizing it, what would you say your work in the Anthology is about?
It‘s an exploration of my personal female and émigré experience through the prism of ancestral memory.
What does the term “migrant literature” mean to you?
I do not know actually. I guess we could speak about migrant, exiled, transnational authors, but literature is literature, it can’t migrate.
What do you think migrant writers bring to contemporary literature that would otherwise be missing?
Living in different places, writers have to learn to perceive the world from many different perspectives, this experience makes their worldview much more complex. And I guess they can enrich contemporary literature with this complexity.
Why do you write?
I love travelling and exploring unknown places. Writing an essay, a poem or a book of poems is a journey for me. And when the whole new world is being created, while you are literally moving through the text, it fills me with thrill and joy.
What’s the best and the worst writing advice you’ve ever been given?
The best advice ever is to read as much as you can. And the worst is to write every day.
What are you currently working on?
At the moment, I have a lot of events and readings, so this makes it impossible for me to sit and concentrate on my writing with no interruption. Though through reasearch and reading I’m gathering my thoughts, and the idea of a new book is growing in me.
What you have been reading lately?
A German-language book about the artist and poet Kurt Schwitters who was close to the Dada-movement and whose avantgarde works, like collages and assemblages, were recognized as “degenerate art” by the Nazi regime. He died in exile in Great Britain, in poverty and obscurity.
Julia Cimafiejeva (Юля Цімафеева), born in Belarus in 1982, is a writer and translator. She is the author of six poetry collections in Belarusian and Minsk Diary, a book written in English. In 2020, Cimafiejeva participated in protests in Belarus following the presidential election. Since then, she has lived in exile in Europe and is currently based in Berlin. Her books have been published in English, German, Polish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Dutch, and her poems have been translated into more than ten languages. Her first book published in the United States, Motherfield: Poems & Belarusian Protest Diary (Deep Vellum, 2022), was longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Her recent German-language publications include Ich zerschneide die Geschichte. Lyrik und Collagen (Edition Frölich, 2025) and Blutkreislauf (edition.fotoTAPETA, 2025). The latter was included in the Lyrik-Empfehlungen 2026 list, shortlisted for the 2026 Internationaler Literaturpreis awarded by HKW, and earned her the Hilde-Domin-Preis für Literatur im Exil Heidelberg.
