The Poet Who Paints History - Tetiana Yatsechko-Blazhenko

Some artists paint memories. Others write them. Ukrainian writer, poet, and visual artist Tetiana Yatsechko-Blazhenko does both, weaving together poetry, prose, photography, and painting into works that blur the boundaries between image and language. Imagine being a woman who hears archives. Deeply influenced by family history, cultural memory, and the emotional landscapes of contemporary Ukraine, her creative practice transforms fragments of archives, childhood recollections, and inherited stories into vivid acts of artistic preservation.

In this conversation, Tetiana reflects on the relationship between art and memory, the creative dialogue between text and image, the challenge of preserving personal and collective histories, and the enduring power of imagination to bring the past—and ourselves—to life.

1. Your work moves between poetry, literary fiction, visual art, and hybrid forms. What draws you to crossing boundaries between different artistic mediums, and how does one form influence the other?

Answer: The best way to describe my experience is probably through a line by Henri Michaux: “Painting, composing, writing: running the gamut. This is the adventure of being alive.”

I began writing poetry when I was thirteen. Later, as a student, I wrote a great deal of prose, mostly as a way of releasing emotions. During the pandemic, when we were all confined to our homes, I picked up a paintbrush and began painting and writing again.

A few years ago, I began publishing my poetry and prose in literary journals and anthologies in Ukraine and abroad. What interests me most is the moment when the boundaries between forms disappear. Sometimes an image is born together with a poem; sometimes a poem creates an image in my mind. They can become inseparable.

There is also a very intimate connection between my painting and my family history. My grandmother, who was also named Tetiana, used to embroider flowers and birds onto fabric. I grew up with those images, and I feel that my own paintings somehow continue something I inherited from her. What she created with thread, I now sometimes try to express through colour and paint.

I imagine my future collection of poetry as a meeting point of these forms, bringing together poems, paintings, and photographs. For me, moving between mediums is not so much a conscious choice as a natural way of thinking and feeling.

2. Fragmentation, memory, perception, and personal mythology appear to be recurring threads in your work. What fascinates you about fragmented stories and memories that cannot—or perhaps should not—be told in a completely linear way?

Answer: I am a historian by education, and I have been researching my own family history for many years. I have traced my family line back to the seventeenth century. For years, I have written historical texts about my family, working with monographs, academic articles, archival documents, and other historical sources. But at some point, I realized that even this was no longer enough for me.

Historical research can tell me what happened. Literature allows me to imagine how it felt to be there.

In archival documents, I sometimes discover small, unexpectedly vivid details about the lives of my ancestors — their occupations, their homes, the churches they attended, the way a house was divided between family members. These fragments can suddenly make the past feel almost tangible: the smell of freshly baked bread, a shared house, a church, an ordinary conversation that might have taken place centuries ago.

I take some of these historical details and transform them into stories and dialogues. Of course, the dialogue is my literary reconstruction, not a historical document. But through it, I can give a human voice to people who otherwise remain only names in an archive.

I also have many stories connected with my grandmother's village. Some come from my own childhood memories, while others were told by my grandmother and her friends. They exist as fragments rather than as one continuous narrative.

I have spent years studying my ancestors. Now I feel that I also need to preserve them through living emotions. I want not only to know who they were, but to hear them, imagine their everyday lives, and let them exist as people rather than simply as entries in a historical record.

3. As both a poet and visual artist, you work at the intersection of text and image. When creating a piece, does the image arrive first, does the language arrive first, or do they develop together?

Answer: For me, neither image nor language usually comes first.

What comes first is an emotion — anxiety, fear, anger, sometimes even hatred or helplessness. Then there is a moment when I realize that I cannot sleep, cannot simply stand still and carry on with my day, until I have somehow expressed what is happening inside me.

Perhaps this is also where literature becomes essential to me. I am often required to be restrained, precise, and objective — even when the subject is something that makes me want to scream from despair or pain. Literature allows me to remain human.

Only then does the form reveal itself. Sometimes it becomes a poem, sometimes an image, and sometimes the two appear almost simultaneously.

I think of writing and painting as two different languages for the same internal impulse. I do not always know in advance which language will be more accurate.

4. Your writing has appeared in literary journals and anthologies across different countries and languages. How has publishing internationally shaped your understanding of your own literary identity and voice?

Answer: It is difficult for me to speak about recognition, because I still see myself as one voice among many.

What matters to me is that this voice can travel beyond the place where it was created. My poetry, prose, paintings, and photographs have reached audiences in different parts of the world. Each time a reader or viewer from a different cultural background finds something recognizable in my work, I feel a very particular kind of joy.

It makes me think that literature can create a space of understanding even when we do not share the same cultural experience. Perhaps my literary identity is shaped not only by where I come from, but also by this dialogue with readers who come from somewhere else.

At the same time, everything I do as an artist remains deeply connected to my country and to the people whose stories and experiences shape my work. I do not see international recognition as a departure from that connection. If anything, it allows me to carry a small part of that cultural world with me and share it with readers elsewhere.

5. You are also a co-author of the collaborative play-patchwork Bosorka. What did collaboration teach you about creativity, especially when writing is usually considered such an intimate and individual practice?

Answer: The collaborative play-patchwork Bosorka is a continuation of the novel-patchwork Bosorka, created from the idea of Ukrainian writer Serhii Batura. The original project brought together 228 authors who created 254 stories, forming one collective literary work. The project was recognized as a National Record of Ukraine.

For me, such projects are an interesting experience because writing, which is usually a very intimate and individual process, becomes a dialogue with other authors. You have to listen, respond, adapt, and at the same time preserve your own voice.

I think this is what makes collaborative writing so special: many different perspectives can coexist within one work without losing their individuality. Each author brings something personal, but together these voices can create something much larger than a single story.

6. Your prose received recognition in the 2025 Odesa Miniature contest. Looking at your journey so far, what keeps you returning to literature and art—and what would you like readers to discover about themselves through your work?

Answer: I keep returning to literature because I feel the need to preserve something that is constantly disappearing: the history of our time, its emotions, its atmosphere, the pulse of a city that continues to beat despite everything.

I am interested in recording not only what happens, but also how it feels to live through a particular moment in history. Literature gives me the possibility of preserving the emotional truth of an experience — the details, voices, gestures, fears, laughter, and small moments that may never appear in a historical record.

Everything I do as an artist is, in one way or another, connected to my Ukraine and to my people, whose strength, creativity, and humanity I deeply admire. I want my work to become part of the cultural memory of my time.

Through my work, I want to show the extraordinary resilience of people who continue to create, laugh, love, and make beauty even when the world around them is deeply uncertain.

And perhaps I would like readers to discover something similar in themselves: the ability to transform fear into life, to continue creating even when circumstances seem to make creation impossible.

Sometimes the most important discovery is simply realizing that another way of living is possible — and asking, with genuine surprise: “Wait, could we do it this way too?”

Rapid Fire: The Poet Behind the Pages

Now let's leave the serious literary questions behind and meet Tetiana beyond the metaphors, manuscripts, and mysterious creative process—with a rapid-fire round of poetic instincts, personal quirks, and a little artistic chaos!

1. Your poetry wakes up at…

A. Sunrise 🌅

B. Midnight 🌙

C. Whenever it feels like it—poetry has no schedule! ✔

2. A poem begins with…

A. A strange image

B. A powerful emotion ✔

C. One sentence that suddenly appears in your head

3. If your creative mind were a place, it would be…

A. An old library 📚 ✔

B. A surreal art gallery 🎨

C. A forest where nobody knows the way out 🌲 

4. Your biggest enemy as a writer?

A. Procrastination

B. Overthinking one sentence for three hours ✔

C. The terrifying blank page

5. If you could turn one everyday object into a poem, you'd choose…

A. A mirror

B. A teacup

C. A pair of old shoes ✔

6. Your ideal creative day includes…

A. Writing alone with coffee

B. Painting while listening to music ✔

C. Getting completely distracted and somehow creating something brilliant

7. Which poet's life would you secretly love to live for one day?

A. Emily Dickinson ✔

B. Rainer Maria Rilke

C. Pablo Neruda

8. When inspiration refuses to arrive, you…

A. Go for a walk

B. Stare dramatically out of the window

C. Write anyway and pretend the inspiration was there all along ✔

9. Your husband finds you staring into space. You're probably…

A. Writing a poem in your head ✔

B. Inventing a fictional character

C. Absolutely thinking about what to have for dinner

10. Complete the sentence: “A poet's superpower is…”

A. Finding beauty in ordinary things

B. Turning pain into language ✔

C. Making everyone wonder, “What exactly did I just read?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tetiana Yatsechko-Blazhenko is a Ukrainian writer, poet, and visual artist working across poetry, literary fiction, and hybrid forms. Her work explores fragmentation, memory, perception, and the connections between text, image, and personal mythology. Her writing has appeared in international literary journals and magazines, including Midway Journal, Eleventh Hour Literary, Sheepshead Review, Shot Glass Journal, Corncrake Magazine, Plants & Poetry Journal, and Red Ogre Review. Her work has been featured in international anthologies such as Fire in the Lines, In the Language of Flowers, The Echoes We Make, Tidings, and Sundowner. In Ukrainian, she is a contributing author to several literary collections and anthologies. She is also a co-author of the collaborative play-patchwork Bosorka. Her prose has received recognition in Ukrainian literary competitions, including the 2025 Odesa Miniature contest.