photo by: Contributed

Lyuba Yakimchuk

A prominent Ukrainian poet who recently performed with John Legend at the Grammy Awards is slated to appear in Lawrence soon.

Lyuba Yakimchuk will present the Palij Lecture for the KU Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at 2 p.m. Nov. 6 at the Cider Gallery, 810 Pennsylvania St., in East Lawrence. The lecture, titled “Ball and Chain: Russian Culture Invasion of Ukraine,” is free and open to the public.

In her talk, Yakimchuk, who is also a screenwriter and journalist, will explain that what is currently happening in Ukraine is not just a war, but the spread of archaic Russian culture all over Ukraine, according to a news release from the KU center.

“She will examine how Russian cultural tradition affects Ukrainian culture during the ongoing war, how the Ukrainian and Russian languages are changing in Ukraine, why profanity is no longer taboo, and the ways language changes affect poetry,” the release said. “Her talk is about culture as a part of war and politics.”

Yakimchuk is the author of several full-length poetry collections, including “Like FASHION” and “Apricots of Donbas,” and the film script for “The Building of the Word.”

She has won the International Slavic Poetic Award and the international “Coronation of the Word” literary contest. Her writing has appeared in magazines in Ukraine, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Israel, and has been translated into 11 languages.

She performs in a musical and poetic duet with the Ukrainian double-bass player Mark Tokar.

Yakimchuk also works as a cultural manager. In 2012 she organized the “Semenko Year” project dedicated to the Ukrainian futurists, and she curated the 2015 literary program Cultural Forum “Donkult.” She was a scholar in the “Gaude Polonia” program of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Poland. In 2015 Kyiv’s New Time magazine listed Yakimchuk among the 100 most influential people of culture in Ukraine.

Yakimchuk’s talk is made possible by the Palij Family Fund, which brings the world’s leading experts in Ukrainian studies to Lawrence.