Lyrics of Home and Nation: The Poetic Geographies of Anna Akhmatova and Lina Kostenko

Anna Akhmatova and Lina Kostenko create extensive, imaginative poetic geographies that span the corpora of their lyric poetry. They reinterpret places through the lens of nostalgia, longing, or regret, and recreate the cities and natural landmarks of the world in a manner that is simultaneously unique to them and reflective of their respective national historiographies. Akhmatova and Kostenko center their poetic geographies in St. Petersburg and Ukraine respectively, but both poets extend their geographic discussions to embrace the world at large. These poetic geographies reveal creative re-interpretations of actual physical spaces and provide insight into the poets’ national identities and worldviews.