Tarnawsky to read poetry at Kovalchuk art exhibit (03/19/00)

Tarnawsky to read poetry at Kovalchuk art exhibit

NEW YORK - At the March 28 opening of the exhibit of paintings by Volodymyr Kovalchuk at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City, Ukrainian American poet and writer Yuriy Tarnawsky will read from his book of poems "Yikh Nemaye" (They Don't Exist), which was published last fall by the Kyiv publishing house Rodovid.

The 420-page book constitutes Mr. Tarnawsky's second volume of collected poetry and contains 10 previously published and unpublished collections and book-length poems, virtually all of his poetic output since his first volume of collected poetry, "Poems About Nothing and Other Poems on the Same Subject," came out in 1970.

Mr. Tarnawsky is a founding member of the group of modernist Ukrainian émigré writers, the New York Group, and of the group of avant-garde American writers, Fiction Collective. He has published 19 books of poetry, seven plays and three novels, both in Ukrainian and English.

Mr. Kovalchuk, who hails from Novhorod-Volynskyi, was educated in Dnipropetrovsk. He has had a number of one-man shows, and his works are part of numerous museum and private collections. He has also worked extensively as a stage designer in Latvia, Russia and most recently Canada, where he now resides.

He has been a close collaborator of the well-known Ukrainian actor and director Gregory Hlady (Hryhoriy Hladiy), who stars in the upcoming movie about the legendary UPA leader Roman Shukhevych [Taras Chuprynka], directed by Oles Yanchuk.

Mr. Kovalchuk did the stage design for Mr. Hlady's laboratory production of Yuriy Tarnawsky's "Not Medea" at New York's Mabou Mines in 1998. His most recent work was stage design for Alexander Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri," in Anatoli Vasiliev's production in Moscow.

At the opening, Mr. Tarnawsky will read both in Ukrainian and English. After the reading, Mr. Tarnawsky's New York Group colleague Bohdan Boychuk will conduct an interview with him, in which the public will be free to participate.

The opening will take place at 6-9 p.m. The exhibit will be on view March 29 through April 2.

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