Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko

Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko is the author of over a dozen books of poetry. His most recent collection in Ukrainian, Decadence (2017), became a national bestseller through Ukraine’s largest bookstore chain, Ye Bookstore. His first book in English, Happy Lovers (2021), was shortlisted for the prestigious Ukrainian-American Kovaliv Prize. In 2013, he published the first-ever Ukrainian translation of Jim Morrison’s poetry—an edition that sold out in a single day during its launch at the Kurbas Theatre in Lviv, instantly becoming a collector’s item.

His bestselling debut novel in English, Nothing Is Under Control, is praised for its raw intimacy, experimental form, and political urgency. Blending autofiction with punk poetics, the novel has struck a chord with readers across generations and continents.

"This is poetry as noir, as self-interrogation: Chandler meets Bukowski. Mining the urban dark, Fraze-Frazenko mints epigrams ("in Ukrainian pain/is a masculine noun") and refuses to look away "because no matter where we might be, /we're always followed by shadows./we carry dark wounds." What he unearths glimmers with veins of luminosity certain to haunt long after the book is closed." Askold Melnyczuk author, founder of AGNI (magazine).

click here to read a selection of translations Oleksandr has done over the years in both English and Ukrainian.

NOTHING IS UNDER CONTROL (2025) novel

Nothing Is Under Control is a raw, disjointed, and strangely beautiful novel about trying to stay grounded in a world that keeps shifting under your feet.

A writer without a country. A city with no off switch. A memory that keeps looping back at the worst possible time. Across warzones, subway tunnels, half-remembered childhoods, and half-finished conversations, the narrator searches for meaning—or at least something that feels like it.

Told in sharp, poetic fragments and moments of dark humor, this is a book for anyone who's ever felt lost in translation—between languages, places, or versions of themselves. Nothing Is Under Control is about exile, identity, and the absurd clarity that comes when everything falls apart.

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FAQ UKRAINE (2024) poetry collection

FAQ UKRAINE is the second poetry book by Oleksandr Fraze-Frazenko published in the United States. It contains new poems written in English (translated into Ukrainian) and selected works translated into English from Ukrainian.

This book delves into the sophisticated and often controversial love-hate relationship between the poet and his motherland, guiding readers through the labyrinth of history while shedding light on the nation's uncertain future.

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HAPPY LOVERS (2021) poetry collection

Oleksandr Fraze-Frazenko is one of the most innovative Ukrainian artists of his generation. This bilingual book of poetry and prose contains new texts and some previously published in his book of collected works Decadence (2017). These texts are a cause for the reader to inhabit a space in between life and death and good and evil. This can be an uncomfortable and interesting space, one that makes these pages so alluring. "Sandy Dies," the prose section, provokes the reader to question reality.

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DECADENCE (2017) poetry collection

Oleksandr Frazé-Frazénko’s Decadence is a landmark work in contemporary Ukrainian poetry—dark, elemental, and deeply rooted in the archetypal. Rather than following modern poetic trends, the book draws power from ancient traditions: spells, chants, and the earliest poetic forms known to humanity.

As renowned Ukrainian poet Yuriy Tarnawsky writes:

“This is poetry of the purest kind, based on semantics—on meaning—rather than phonetics or sound. Whoever wants proof of this should look to ancient folk spells or the earliest poetry that has survived—Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian. All of it is built on associations, and Oleksandr Fraze-Frazenko’s Mass is based on them. They support it the way the spinal column supports the human body—from the first line (I would call it a poem, rather than a collection of poems) to the last.”

Decadence has been recognized as a bestseller by Ye Bookstore, Ukraine’s largest book retailer, and continues to resonate with readers seeking poetry that cuts to the bone.

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Poetry reading in English.

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Poetry reading in Ukrainian.

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Public debates.

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Interviews.

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