Category: DROKACADEMY

April 25, 2026, 52 years after the Carnation Revolution There is a vase of carnations on our table this week. Pink, peach, soft yellow, deep purple, the white ones streaked with magenta as if someone painted them by hand. I bought them at Costco. They are not heroic flowers. They are not from a Lisbon…

An Invitation to Continue A Call to Shevchenko Voices Around the World What Eleven Days Taught Me Eleven cities. Eleven monuments. Eleven encounters with the same bronze face in eleven different languages, on eleven different pedestals, in eleven different versions of what it means to carry Ukraine into the world. Kranj. Vienna. Washington. Bratislava. Zagreb.…

Day Eleven. The final city. The city that made me Canadian. Before Canada, There Was a Story About an Apartment My Mama told me this story more than once, with the particular pleasure of a detail that turns out to matter. The apartment where I was born in Lviv was previously inhabited by a family…

Every year, near the end of the semester, I ask my students two questions. What was helpful? What do you still remember? I have been asking these questions for over twenty years, across more than seven thousand students, at universities from coast to coast to coast in Canada and beyond, as I teach many international…

Day Ten. The same poet. The city where it all began. Before Everything Else Every other story in this series has been about arriving somewhere. A train station, a bus stop, a tram that carries you through an unfamiliar city toward a bronze face you have read about but not yet seen. The encounter has…

Day Nine. The same poet. In the city that is his. This One Is Different Every other story in this series has been about finding Shevchenko far from Ukraine. In Kranj and Vienna and Washington and Bratislava and Zagreb and Prague and Paris and Lisbon, the encounter has carried the particular quality of diaspora recognition:…

Day Eight. The same poet. At the edge of Europe, above the river that flows to the ocean. Lisbon, and the People Who Made It Home I came to Lisbon twice, in the autumn of 2022 and again in the autumn of 2023, and both times the city gave me more than I had arrived…

A message to my students and social workers everywhere Today is World Social Work Day. I am writing from Kamloops, British Columbia, on the unceded territory of the Secwépemc people, with a full heart and a deep sense of gratitude. Gratitude, first, to the IFSW, IASSW, EASSW, for their inspiring message this year, a reminder…

Day Seven. The same poet. The city that gave him a square. The Long Way to Paris I did not plan Paris. Paris arrived the way certain gifts arrive, sideways, through the logic of a schedule that was already full, through an itinerary that had been built around something else entirely and then suddenly, improbably,…

Day Six. The same poet. The city that printed his words when his empire banned them. The 6 A.M. Train There is a particular discipline to the early morning train. Not the romantic kind of early, not the pre-dawn departure into mystery, but the practical kind: the alarm at five, the dark streets, the station…

Day Five. The same poet. The golden hour found him first. The Night Train from Split There is a particular quality to arriving somewhere by night train that no other form of travel replicates. You board in one world, surrender to motion and darkness and the rhythm of wheels on track, and when you wake,…

Day Four. The same poet, a different logic of arrival. The Detour That Was Not Optional There is a particular kind of decision that does not feel like a decision at all. It arrives fully formed, already made, and all you are doing is catching up to what you already know you will do. Standing…