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Parallax
Finalist, 2025 Miller Williams Poetry Prize
Julia Kolchinsky’s Parallax offers a lyrical narrative of parenting a neurodiverse child under the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the poet’s birthplace. As her child expresses a fascination with death and violence, Kolchinsky struggles to process the war unfolding far away, on the same soil where so many of her ancestors perished during the Holocaust.
Anchored by a series of poems that look to the moon, this collection explores displaced perspectives and turns to the celestial to offer meditations on how elements formed in distant stars account for so much of our human DNA. In these poems, writes series editor Patricia Smith, Kolchinsky “clutches at a feeling of home that is both unfamiliar and deeply treasured, longs for all that was left behind, struggles to come to terms with the rampant violence devastating a landscape that still, in so many encouraging and heartbreaking ways, belongs to her.”
Julia Kolchinsky’s Parallax offers a lyrical narrative of parenting a neurodiverse child under the shadow of the ongoing war in Ukraine, the poet’s birthplace. As her child expresses a fascination with death and violence, Kolchinsky struggles to process the war unfolding far away, on the same soil where so many of her ancestors perished during the Holocaust.
Anchored by a series of poems that look to the moon, this collection explores displaced perspectives and turns to the celestial to offer meditations on how elements formed in distant stars account for so much of our human DNA. In these poems, writes series editor Patricia Smith, Kolchinsky “clutches at a feeling of home that is both unfamiliar and deeply treasured, longs for all that was left behind, struggles to come to terms with the rampant violence devastating a landscape that still, in so many encouraging and heartbreaking ways, belongs to her.”
- GenresPoetry
117 pages, Paperback
Published March 14, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 19, 2025
Dr Kolchinsky’s poems are amazing ❤️😭
January 14, 2026
"Parallax is a collection that interrogates one of the key questions at the heart of modern poetry: In a world ravaged by unending conflict and upheaval—military, domestic, especially in the poet’s native Ukraine—what relevance can poetry still claim? Can poetry still matter?
The sentiment is most explicitly and audaciously expressed in “Two Years Later,” in which the speaker admits, “The last thing I want is another poem.” Parallax does not shy away from its underlying questions; instead, it offers language as both witness and resistance to violence."
--from my review for "Another Chicago Magazine"
https://anotherchicagomagazine.net/20...
The sentiment is most explicitly and audaciously expressed in “Two Years Later,” in which the speaker admits, “The last thing I want is another poem.” Parallax does not shy away from its underlying questions; instead, it offers language as both witness and resistance to violence."
--from my review for "Another Chicago Magazine"
https://anotherchicagomagazine.net/20...
July 12, 2025
I love Julia and these poems. Have read many individually before, but sinking into the entire collection was a 10x more beautiful, effective experience. And damn will she work a villanelle!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews