Poetry in Ukraine is playing a vital role in processing trauma and bolstering resistance amid the ongoing war launched by Russia.
According to western intelligence experts – and doubtless Russian forces, too – Kyiv was supposed to fall within days of the full-scale invasion that began on February 24 2022. They had not reckoned with the resilience of a society that has long defended its language and culture, and in which poets have for centuries resisted Russian attempts to erase Ukrainian identity.
To say there has been a renaissance of poetry in Ukraine is an understatement. Not since the first world war has there been anything approaching the quality and quantity of work by poets who are also combatants. Civil society has reciprocated, with packed-out poetry readings in the bomb shelters of frontline cities and initiatives including the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture’s Poetry of the Free portal with more than 43,500 submissions since February 2022.
