From Shore to Shore: Ukrainian Mennonite Poetry in Translation (Limited edition paperback) 2025, by Hannah Gardiner (Translator) and Sigmund Jakob-Michael Stephan (Translator)
Within the sting of hunger, leave-taking’s singing and hissing of train, within garden as sanctuary and the steppe’s fragrant acacias, or houses burnt to ash, and the field where “the red fox lurks for chicklings,” the virtue of longanimity finds home. In poems by ancestral Ukrainian Mennonites, between the lines and spaces, in the vast span of diaspora, and the span of belief and despair, in the ache of body and heart, here “God’s grace roams.” —Connie T. Braun, author of Moonroads: Poems (CMU Press, 2025), and The Steppes are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir (Ronsdale Press, 2008).
These translated poems add compelling voices to the increasing number of personal memoirs that depict the lives of Mennonites in Russia and Ukraine, and their migrations to North and South America, during the tragic years the followed the onset of communism in the 1920s. This rare collection demonstrates that poetry, like no other genre of writing, can expressively hold together emotions of joy and sorrow, and notions of faith and doubt. —Marlene Epp, professor emeritus, Conrad Grebel University College
The experience of immeasurable loss and endless longing expressed in these poems is as deep and profound for many displaced people today as it was when they were written. Thanks to Hannah and Jakob, they not only retell that long ago experience but also continue to speak powerfully today. Their translation captures the message, meaning and mood of these poems in crisp and clear language. Anna Rempel's "At the Station in Lichtenau" brought to life the unimaginable tragedy and terror, the heartrending loss and endless longing of Mennonites fleeing the Soviet Union in the 1920s for participants on the Memories of Migration: Russlaender 100 train tour in 2023 in a way that lectures alone could not. —Henry Paetkau, former president of Conrad Grebel University College, and chair of the Russlaender Centenary Committee.
The ten poems in this chapbook collection were written in the first half of the twentieth century in German by Mennonite men and women from the Chortitza and Molotschna colonies of nowadays Ukraine. These poems offer personal accounts that reflect the historical experiences of many Mennonites during this time. Their poetry speaks of war, oppression, persecution, immigration, and living in the diaspora. Some of the poets recount stories of staying; others, stories of leaving. Taken together, the poems offer readers a vivid account of the everyday life of people: their commitment to their families, to hope, and to faith.
Sigmund Jakob-Michael Stephan is currently completing a PhD in German Studies at the University of Jena (Germany), where he is developing a systematic model of the comedic mode in German Romanticism. During his master’s degree in Intercultural German Studies at the University of Waterloo, he was awarded the J. William and Sarah Dyck Award for Russian Mennonite Studies and conducted an internship at the Mennonite Archives of Ontario. He is interested in German literary traditions outside of and at the periphery of German-speaking Europe.
Hannah Gardiner is a writer from Kitchener, Ontario. She has a master’s degree in literary studies from the University of Waterloo. Her writing and community art projects have been supported by the Region of Waterloo, City of Kitchener, City of Waterloo, 8 80 Cities, the Balsam Foundation, and now the Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario, who gratefully funded this translation project.