Introduction

There are hundreds of monuments to the poet and painter Taras Shevchenko not just in Ukraine but all over the world. It is hard to overstate the importance of Shevchenko for most Ukrainians. For them he is not just the national poet who breathed new life into the Ukrainian language but a symbol of their country’s independence. His words kept the national spirit alive during the decades of forced Russification in the 19th Century and they found renewed resonance during the 2014 Maidan uprising. But Shevchenko's work is less well known beyond eastern Europe.

To remedy this Bridget Kendall is joined by Ukrainian writers and literary scholars Olha Poliukhovych from the National University of Kyiv - Mohyla Academy and Mykhailo Nazarenko from Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, and by professor of Slavonic studies at Vienna University Michael Moser. The reader is Ivantiy Novak.

(Photo: A monument to Taras Shevchenko by Igor Grechanyk in Kyiv, Ukraine. Credit: Sergii Kharchenko/NurPhoto/Corbis/Getty Images)