Why these Kansas City musicians are inspired by a Ukrainian poet born in the 1880s

A group of Kansas City musicians is getting together to honor a woman who lived through the most turbulent years of the 20th century and is considered "one of the greatest women poets of all time.”
Kansas City soprano Victoria Botero has spent a lot of time recently thinking about a poet who was born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1889.

Botero says Anna Akhmatova's poems serve as a testament to survival.

“We should pay attention," Botero says. "When a poet can cross the century, can cross continents, can cross languages. There's something there.”

Akhmatova rocketed to early fame as a glamorous young poet. Then came the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, political purges and the devastating Second World War.