{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/gb1xd0rg8q/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Olena Jennings Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn this interview poet and QPL librarian Vijay Ramanathan talks with Poets of Queens reading series founder and curator Olena Jennings. Olena is a translator, writer, and poet based in Astoria, Queens; she is author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment and the chapbook Memory Project. Her translations of Ukrainian poetry with Oksana Lutsyshyna of Artem Chekh’s Absolute Zero were released in 2020 by Glagoslav. Her novel Temporary Shelter is forthcoming in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eOlena Jennings talks about founding the Poets of Queens reading series in 2017 to foster community \u0026amp; to get to know local poets, and how the program has expanded to publishing - she discusses upcoming events, publications, participants and supporters of Poets of Queens. Olena also describes her personal work and where she gets her inspiration, her family history, how she became a translator of Ukrainian poetry, and creating through the COVID shut down. She talks about the many projects, artists and arts organizations she is involved with in Queens and around the world, including the Queens Arts Council.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eOlena Jennings (00:06:36): “Memory Project includes 40 poems and they all are inspired by various family photos that proceeded time in the U.S. and were at the beginning of time in the U.S. on a farm in Wisconsin. So that was interesting to write poems that were inspired by those photographs, because those photographs also represented to me different memories that my grandparents passed down to me... So we had the poems and also I work with visual art a bit. And so I made dresses that were inspired by the poems in different ways with using different embroidery. One was a map of Kharkiv, which is a city my grandparents were from, and that was embroidered in light blue and yellow. And then the bottom of it was an identical map, but it was embroidered in red to portray the hardships and tragedies that went on during the war that, and also that my grandparents might've experienced.”\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/40596"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2021-06-17"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Olena Jennings (Interviewee)","Vijay Ramanathan (Interviewer)","Iryna Sosnovska (Photographer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["Interview recorded as part of the Change and Creativity Through COVID-19 Project at the Far Rockaway Library."]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["1980s-2021 (temporal)","Astoria, Queens, NY (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn this interview poet and QPL librarian Vijay Ramanathan talks with Poets of Queens reading series founder and curator Olena Jennings. Olena is a translator, writer, and poet based in Astoria, Queens; she is author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment and the chapbook Memory Project. Her translations of Ukrainian poetry with Oksana Lutsyshyna of Artem Chekh\u0026rsquo;s Absolute Zero were released in 2020 by Glagoslav. Her novel Temporary Shelter is forthcoming in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eOlena Jennings talks about founding the Poets of Queens reading series in 2017 to foster community \u0026amp; to get to know local poets, and how the program has expanded to publishing - she discusses upcoming events, publications, participants and supporters of Poets of Queens. Olena also describes her personal work and where she gets her inspiration, her family history, how she became a translator of Ukrainian poetry, and creating through the COVID shut down. She talks about the many projects, artists and arts organizations she is involved with in Queens and around the world, including the Queens Arts Council.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eOlena Jennings (00:06:36): \u0026ldquo;Memory Project includes 40 poems and they all are inspired by various family photos that proceeded time in the U.S. and were at the beginning of time in the U.S. on a farm in Wisconsin. So that was interesting to write poems that were inspired by those photographs, because those photographs also represented to me different memories that my grandparents passed down to me... So we had the poems and also I work with visual art a bit. And so I made dresses that were inspired by the poems in different ways with using different embroidery. One was a map of Kharkiv, which is a city my grandparents were from, and that was embroidered in light blue and yellow. And then the bottom of it was an identical map, but it was embroidered in red to portray the hardships and tragedies that went on during the war that, and also that my grandparents might've experienced.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA\u0026nbsp;Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/120/335/small/Olena_Jennings_-aviary.png?1627571033","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - olena_jennings.mp4"]},"duration":1893.0,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/120/335/small/Olena_Jennings_-aviary.png?1627571033","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/120/335/original/olena_jennings.mp4?1627480320","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1893.0,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Welcome to Queens memory project interview with Olena Jennings, who was the author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment, and the chapbook Memory Project. Her translation with Oksana Lutsyshyna of Artem Chekh's Absolute Zero was released in 2020 by Glagoslav. Her novel Temporary Shelter is forthcoming in 2021 from Cervena Barva Press. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and an MA from University of Alberta. She's the founder and curator of the Poets of Queens reading series. Okay. So welcome Olena. Thank you. So also just want to clear up in the beginning that you agreed to the terms and conditions as outlined previously in email for Queens memory project.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=3.0,61.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Thank you, Vijay. So I guess I will start by talking about Poets of Queens.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=61.0,69.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: I want to ask you about please tell when was it founded and what was the impetus behind founding it?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=69.0,77.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Well, I wanted to create an organization that fostered a community of poets and Queens because I didn't know many poets at that time. And that was about 2017. And what happened was very serendipitous. I went into a cafe, that's located a few blocks from me on Ditmars, and I asked them whether they would like to hold a reading series there potentially. And I left my number with the bartender and the owner called me back a little later and said that we could try a reading out. And that was in December, 2017. And that went pretty well. So we were able to hold readings there for a while. We had two readers, usually two readers per reading, and we have a website, so the readers are featured on the website and now we have expanded into publications. So we had the Poets of Queens anthology, which included 25 poets from Queens or associated in some way with Queens and the series. Yeah.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=77.0,167.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Why don't we go a little bit into the future for Poets of Queens. What do you expect to be doing with it and where is it going from here?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=167.0,177.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Well, one thing is in July. We'll be at the New York City Poetry Festival. So I'm really excited about that. We'll be having a reading on a stage and which will include a few poets from Poets of Queens. And also we will be having a table with our books, which include two individual collections. Now, one by Micah Zevin and the other one by Cynthia Andrews. Micah Zevin is called Metal, Heavy. And Cynthia Andrews is A Little Before Twelve. Micah was the first to be published by Poets of Queens press. And I met him at the very beginning of Poets of Queens and appreciated his work. So he was a natural fit for the first collection. And then Cynthia Andrews was someone who reached out to me without knowing me and sent me some of her poems. And I really liked them. So I thought it would be nice for her to have her collection. And she is someone who's done an MFA at Brooklyn college and studied under Alan Ginsburg. And she has really never had a full collection published, just some chapbooks, which is great, but this was an opportunity for her to have a full collection. So we're doing the poetry Festival with those two books. And in the future we will have we will have submissions for a new collection. So open submissions. So anybody who wants can submit a manuscript and we'll take a look at it and have it read. And we also established a small board. And I'm not sure exactly. Right now they're there to offer advice in case of any issues that come up. The board members are Tom Healy, who is a poet, and Virlana Tkacz who's a theater director. She works with LA mama theater and Sherese Francis.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=177.0,323.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: So, and she's a poet as well. So it's kind of a mixed board between poets then and Virlana, who has offered me a lot of advice on running an organization as she runs her theater company. And I guess she's kind of steering me in the direction of starting a nonprofit, but I don't know if I'm fully ready to do that because it involves a lot of paperwork as I'm sure you know, and so I guess those are the main things that are happening with Poets of Queens. We will start the reading series back up in person, hopefully in September,\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=323.0,374.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Very good.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=374.0,374.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: probably take place at Book Culture LIC, because that's where we've been having the readings, the readings that happened before COVID were at Book Culture. So we'll probably continue to have them there.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=374.0,388.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: So talking about your own poetry practice, tell us a little about the chapbook Memory Project. How did that, how did that go?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=388.0,396.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: That went really well. I got a grant from Queens Council of the Arts in 2018 to write the poems. So, Memory Project includes 40 poems and they all are inspired by various family photos that proceeded time in the U S and were at the beginning of time in the U S on a farm in Wisconsin. So that was interesting to write poems that were inspired by those photographs, because those photographs also represented to me different memories that my grandparents passed down to me. It was as if they had said, oh, yeah, we had this, for example, we had this collie and she was really nice. And then there would be the picture of the collie. So it kind of fit with the memories that my grandparents would talk about very well. So we had the poems and also I work with visual art a bit.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=396.0,465.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: And so I made dresses that were inspired by the poems in different ways with using different embroidery. One was a map of Kharkiv, which is a city my grandparents were from, and that was embroidered in light blue and yellow. And then the bottom of it was an identical map, but it was embroidered in red to portray the hardships and tragedies that went on during the war that, and also that my grandparents might've experienced. So that was one of the dresses. And then another dress had wax on it from that you would normally use to make a Ukrainian Easter egg. And so I use the same tool that you would use to make the egg and wrote out a poem that was actually one of the poems that my grandparents had memorized. They had various poems, random poems memorized that they had learned and all the way back in the limited grade school that they had.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=465.0,540.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: So that was really interesting to me how a poem could be internalized that way, because I really actually, I have lines of poems memorized, but I don't have a whole poem memorized that I could recite right now, for example. So that was really interesting. So I put that on a dress and then another dress had poppies on it that were artificial, like silk flowers that represented these flowers that my grandma had on her dresser. So that one was I guess, simpler and was more straightforward then the rest. So I had these dresses along with some paraphernalia, kind of like the dishes that they would have had and kind of recreating their lives in this small space and in Queens farm, which is where the event took place. And I read the memory project, showed some pictures, had the dresses had you. And so that's thanks to the Queens Council on the Arts and how this chapbook and this event came to be,\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=540.0,616.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: And also you have the poetry collection Songs from an apartment, what was that-- What are the themes of that collection?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=616.0,622.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: That's more personal, more personal, I would say. I mean, this one is personal, but it was more about my family and this one. So songs from an apartment more about me and a sense of I guess there's a kind of a sense of melancholy that follows throughout and all the poems and they range from childhood memories to more memories of... In later in life, I guess.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=622.0,660.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Yeah. And I understand you're moving into novel writing. So you have temporary shelter forthcoming in 2021.Tell us a little about that project?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=660.0,668.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: That project actually it took place a while ago. I wrote that book when I was doing the MFA at Columbia. And then I-- at that time, it was, it had two sections. One was a past section, which it takes the novel takes place in about 1914. So I had the past section and then I had a present day section of a narrator looking at the, kind of doing research on the past, but I found it kind of gimmicky and and in the places that it wasn't gimmicky, it didn't really hold together. So I took away the whole present day section, and now it's all happening in the past. And it is based on the life of a Russian poet. I'm sure you probably know her Anna Akhmatova. And so it's a fictional account of certain parts of her life, her relationship with another poet, Nicolai Gumilev and a relationship with an actress who she was influenced by, I guess, Olga Glebova and so I wrote this a while ago and I have since written other novels, but I was still kind of tied to this novel because I felt like I had spent so much of just a big chunk of my life on it. And so I still want it to send it out. So I sent it, somebody had told me about Savannah Barbara press, and I thought, okay, well, I might as well just send it to them. I sent it to them and it took them a while to read it. I want to say it took them a year to read it. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it might've been. And finally they wrote back and said they were interested in, so I was very excited.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=668.0,783.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: So let's go into a little bit of family history. You mentioned a little bit of the memory project about family history, but let's go into specifics, where your parents are from and where were they born and when did they move to Queens?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=783.0,799.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Okay. So my, my dad was born in actually in Tacoma, Washington. So he has a lot of memories of Vashon island and very idyllic, idyllic memories. And his parents were a mixture of different nationalities, including Scottish, Irish, German. So, and also, some in Quebec. And so we actually visited Quebec, one year, probably 10, I want to say like 10 years ago, but the whole town, it was a really, really small town. I just almost, well more than a handful of people, but very, I don't know how many but very small. And even if you go into the cemetery, every cemetery ever, everybody in a cemetery has the last name, which is my last name Jennings. And every, every farmhouse is owned by somebody with the name of Jennings. And so it was rather interesting trip to see that part of my dad's past that, that I didn't really know about at all.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=799.0,881.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: And my mom is originally from Ukraine. Well, her parents were from Ukraine and she was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, in the mid forties. And they immigrated to the U S when she was three. So she grew up here and they first immigrated-- started in a small town in Wisconsin where they worked on a farm. And I don't know if this is interesting, but my, my parents met in a Harvard summer school when my dad was taking a math class and my mom was taking them a very good Ukrainian program. So my mom was kind of refining her Ukrainian language skills there by taking advanced Ukrainian. And so they met there and my dad later moved to Wisconsin.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=881.0,943.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: So you've done a lot of work in translation and translating poetry counsel. Tell us about that work?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=943.0,949.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Okay, well, I started that probably around the same time that I started writing my own poetry because I felt like when I was reading Ukrainian poetry that I didn't understand at all, and I felt like translating, it was a good way to gain knowledge. That was more vast than just looking up words individually in the dictionary. So I did that just for myself for a really long time. And then I became more skilled with the language. And so I think my first translations where for a website international, I think it was just called international poetry. And those were by the poem by the poet Helena Crook, who still writes is still writing poetry. She's pretty young still. So I really like translating contemporary poetry. Recently I did a book by Iryna Shuvalova, who is a very interesting poet and that she uses, she combines nature with a lot of personal feelings and a lot of myths. And so I did her book, which was called Pray to the Empty Wells and Last Forest press published that in 2019. So that was an interesting project. And now I'm doing a poet who actually lives in New York, but he writes in Ukrainian, his name is Vasyl Makhno and his book is going to be called Paper Bridge is going to be published by Plamen press hopefully next year or the end of this year.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=949.0,1068.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: What are some of the biggest challenges translating poetry from Ukrainian to English?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1068.0,1073.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: The challenges I think are in that the syntax is so different in Ukrainian because, because of the endings, the declensions, and so you can pretty much order the words, however you want. And you'll be, be able to determine the meaning depending on their endings, but in English, we have a very specific syntax. So that's one of the challenges to keep the poetic, the way to keep the poetic way that words are arranged in Ukrainian and kind of transfer that into English. So basically I guess, is to keep the poetic nature of the poem rather than just translate it word for word and think of expressions in English that might reach towards an expression in Ukrainian.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1073.0,1140.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Thank you. So in the past year, we've had the COVID crisis. How has that affected, the quarantine time and the, post quarantine time of still being affected by COVID, how has that effected your poetry practice? Were you able to maintain it, or how did you handle?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1140.0,1157.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Well, it I've been writing through COVID because I've been home and working from home. And so that's been actually beneficial for my poetry practice. The, I also did a project that I think I mentioned before called threads, and that happened during COVID, although it didn't happen as much in a way that I would've really liked it to happen. It was kind of limited in that that was a project that combined visual art and poetry. So all the visual art was inspired by poems, either by poets, from Queens or by there was a Russian poet and there was a Ukrainian poet. So the poems came from various sources that the artists chose. And so that took place. It was one of Flux Factory in LIC, one of their first events. We had the art from, art from Colombia Bogota, and we had poems from different various poets.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1157.0,1236.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nSpeaker 1: Thank you. So now going into your connections to Queens, how long have you lived in Queens and what neighborhoods did you live in?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1236.0,1243.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: I've always lived in Astoria and I've always lived in the same spot since 2014. And I really love it here. It's when I moved here, I felt like I had found a home that I would almost never leave. And now we've lived in the same apartment for, you know, since 2014 and kind of thinking, well, maybe we should look somewhere else, but I think we'll always stay in Queens now.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1243.0,1275.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nSpeaker 1: Thank you. And some of your favorite childhood memories?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1275.0,1280.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Oh, wow. That's a hard one. I guess going well. So my grandparents lived upstairs from us and I felt like going upstairs was going into this magical world. And they had some very limited toys, like they had some marbles and they had playing cards, so we would play Old Maid and play with the marbles and they would always try to feed me. And my grandpa had always Hershey bars with almonds in them. That was his favorite to give away. And he would always give me a little, like a dollar or something.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1280.0,1326.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nSpeaker 1: So let's return to the threads project. The Queens arts Council gave you-- was that the Queens Arts Council project?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1326.0,1336.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: No, actually this, the threads project was started without a grant. It started when I went to a talk that was given by artists from the former Soviet republics. One of them was her name was Nadia and she's from this art group called the Nadenka. And she was showing her work, which was a lot very similar to what I had done with the memory project and the use of clothing and embroidery. And so I approached her after the event and asked if I could have her contact information and maybe we would do something together in the future. And of course she was happy to hear that. And so I talked to Virlana Tkacz. Who's one of the members of the board of Poets of Queens. And she was also very interested in doing something with this group. So we met on Zoom with Nadia and two other members of the group.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1336.0,1407.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: And we plan to do a project in which there they would respond to poetry with their art. And in order to expand the project just a little bit, we added an artist from Ukraine, Waldemart Klyuzko who works a lot with tape and he kind of repeats the fabric, like the construction of fabric with tape, like the warp and weft of the fabric he does with tape. So we added him and then we added artists from Queens, Ged Merino, who runs Bliss on Bliss arts projects. And the first thing that happened was that Jen went to Bogota and he was really excited about the threads project or the prospect of it. So he talked to a gallery there and the gallery was also excited about it. So we ended up showing the threads project in Bogota. And this time we didn't involve Nadenka, we just involved artists from Bogota's.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1407.0,1487.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: So he got a curator there Alejandra Fonseca, and she organized the artist and we use poets from Queens and they did art projects based on the poems. And it showed at a gallery Malejos Proyectos. There and then Jed returned to New York. And we were kind of I guess things were closed down here more than in Bogota, because in Bogota, they were still able to have an in-person event, but it was still pretty much too early for us to have an in-person event, though we managed to have a repetition of the Bogota's exhibit at Flux Factory, just what was one of their first in-person events. And we had the the art in the gallery. And then we had a reading at the windmill garden, which was across from the Flux Factory. And we read the poems that were in use to inspire the art were read along with other poems.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1487.0,1558.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: And after that two weekends, after that, we also had a show at Bliss on Bliss, Ged’s space. And this time we included the Bogota art in one room because he has several rooms. So we're able to do a little bit more. And Nadenka had set their art all the way from Siberia. So we had their art in one of the rooms, one of the rooms dedicated all Nadenka. One of their pieces that was really interesting was a dress that included the coordinates for different different cities in Siberia. And one them that was kind of uniting factor between the members of the Nadenka group was Omsk, which is where their art collective started. And then we had another room with a vault of Waldemart Klyuzko’s art, a jacket made out of tape and a photograph on fabric and also included Ged Merino’s art, which was inspired by a poem by Wanda Phips called womb dreams.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1558.0,1635.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: And also a piece by Aze Ong on which also was inspired by womb dreams by Wanda Phipps. And so now we're kind of continuing the project, but hoping that it will be in New York again after COVID, and that we'll have a bigger space and maybe to show it, show it off. But it was also happening in Manila. And so Manila will add more art to the project. There's the curator in Manila, who's working on it, and it will open September 4 at the drawing room gallery. So I think that that COVID really kind of helped to spark this project because there was a certain because things weren't as busy in the world, there was a certain concentration that I needed to work on this project. And that was kind of thanks to COVID that that happened, that there was this silence around that that was good for working on a creative project.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1635.0,1722.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: And also I see on your website, Olena Jennings.com, I see you have a project called Heritage, which is something that received an Arts Access grant, in part. So tell us a little about that project.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1722.0,1736.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Well, that was a project that I was part of through Long Island City artists, and I saw their theme heritage, and I knew that this could be a continuation of what I was doing with the memory project. And so I made a dress that represented different pieces of my grandparents life... Kind of, so there was a fabric that was with a farm theme and there was another fabric which had a picture of my grandfather standing next to a bale of hay. And then there was a bird that I embroidered because it was a symbol that I took from a old book of making Ukrainian Easter eggs. So that dress was shown at the heritage exhibit for the Long Island City artists.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1736.0,1799.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Thank you. So now, as you wrap up I wanted to let you know, I wanna let the audience know that they can where can they follow you or follow Poets of Queens, where can they find out more information about Poets of Queens?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1799.0,1811.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Poets of Queens has a website poets of queens .org, and we're also on Instagram at Poets of Queens.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1811.0,1819.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Great. And for your own work?\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1819.0,1821.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: You can follow see my website Olena Jennings .com or follow me on Instagram at stray dog skirts for fabric textile work.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1821.0,1837.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Great. And also just to reiterate that Poets of Queens has an anthology, they put out, I believe in 2020, right. August of 2020. Tell us a little bit about that. It goes, we can go back into that.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1837.0,1848.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Okay. The Poets of Queens anthology includes 25 poets either from Queens or associated with Queens and the poets of Queens reading series. And it includes poems by all of them. And you can get it online through Amazon or through Barnes and Noble, or you can buy it at Book Culture LIC, which is where we have the reading series most often, too.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1848.0,1879.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nVijay Ramanathan: Okay. Thanks so much for being here. This has been a interview with Olena Jennings for Queens Memory project, I'm Vijay R. Nathan, or Vijay Ramanathan, thanks so much for being here. Thank you.\n\n","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1879.0,1889.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335/transcript/31561/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\nOlena Jennings: Thank you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/46940/file/120335#t=1889.0,1893.0"}]}]}]}