Meeting the Survivors of Chernobyl

I first encountered Lyubov Sirota in 1990, through her poems about the experience of surviving the Chernobyl disaster. Since then I have been fortunate enough to see her poems translated into English and other languages, printed in several publications, and even set to music and used on film. We also corresponded regularly over the next 20 years, but I was not able to meet her until I traveled with my wife, Paula Elliot, to Kiev in September, 2011.

We were warmly received and treated with great generosity by Lyuba, her husband Victor Grabovsky, and by various members of the community of Prypiat survivors now living in Kiev. What follows are are a few photographs from that visit.

Their own account of the encounter (in Ukrainian) and other photographs may be found here.

For other photographs of this visit to Kiev not directly related to the Chernobyl survivors, see my Picasa account. First mounted October 10, 2011.