In Ukraine, within the context of the battle introduced via Russia in February 2022, poetry performs an very important function in processing the trauma suffered via the inhabitants, whilst strengthening their capability for resistance.
In step with Western intelligence mavens – and in all probability Russian forces as smartly – Kyiv will have to have fallen inside of days of a full-scale invasion that started on February 24, 2022. They did not keep in mind the resilience of a society that has lengthy defended its language and tradition and the place poets for hundreds of years have resisted Ukrainian identification makes an attempt to spot themselves.
It’s an irony to mention that there was a renaissance of poetry in Ukraine. Now not because the First International Conflict have we observed works of such high quality and amount, written via poets who’re additionally warring parties. Civil society has answered to this momentum with jam-packed poetry studying classes in bomb shelters in frontline towns, but additionally thru projects just like the Loose Ukrainian Ministry of Tradition’s Poetry portal, which has gained greater than 43,500 contributions as of February 2022.
Maksim Krivtsov, soldier and poet who died on the entrance in 2024. Wikicommons, CC BI
Ukrainian battle poetry isn’t simple to grasp. Certainly, it these days expresses itself in historic and primitive paperwork: prayer, testimony, cry and curse. Amidst the din of geopolitical information, remark, incorrect information and social media noise, she assists in keeping coming again to a very powerful component of all: folks.
Because the well-known poet Maxim Krivtsov (1990-2024) wrote in his assortment Poems from the Trenches (2024):
“When people ask me what war is, I answer without hesitation: names.”
Krivtsov used to be a device gunner himself and defended Ukraine lengthy earlier than the whole invasion. He used to be killed via a Russian shell in January 2024, simply days after the newsletter of his first and closing e book.
Poets of resistance
There are too many vital Ukrainian poets to record all of them, however for now two names stand out specifically within the Ukrainian poetry revival motion: Yarina Chornohouz and Artur Dron.
Those two poets served their nation. Chornohouz remains to be a drone operator within the Ukrainian Marine Corps within the frontline town of Kherson. Dron enlisted in February 2022, 4 years earlier than he become a draftee, and is now a veteran after being severely injured. Each have printed their poems in English, French and different languages and feature gained main literary awards in Ukraine.
Chornohouz’s poetry and lifestyles are carefully associated with the protection of Ukraine in opposition to the existential danger posed via Russia. His writings also are stuffed with laments and testimonies.
“Ukrainian art in times of war: resistance through culture” (French Tradition, 20 April 2025).
His tune “Fruits of War” is encouraged via his revel in as a primary responder since 2019. This can be a cry that the precious lives misplaced at the battlefield will have to no longer be forgotten in opposition to all odds.
Dron speaks of those unseen and forgotten losses in his assortment Hemigway Is aware of Not anything 2025. His poetry, in addition to that of Chornohous and different Ukrainian battle poets, provides an impressive type of commemoration that may be all of the extra common as a result of it’s intensely private. “First Letter to the Corinthians,” the closing poem in Dron’s assortment We Had been Right here, inspires the affection that drives his option to protect Ukraine.
The younger males of Dron’s corporate have been very as regards to an older soldier, their physician, Alexander “Doc” Kobernik, whom they thought to be their trainer.
In Hemingway Is aware of Not anything, Dron time and again returns to the tale that happened when their place within the woodland used to be beneath consistent Russian bombardment. Disoriented via his mind damage, he is going on the lookout for Document, however learns from his commander that he has been killed. Answerable for evacuating her frame and no longer having a stretcher, he wraps her in a slumbering bag. Whilst Document’s frame remains to be heat, the poet feels the affection emanating from his trainer.
“Poetry before war: the story of a Ukrainian army captain” (Le Figaro, 10 January 2026).
The day Olena, Document’s spouse, discovered of his dying, she wrote a poem. The studying sparked Dron’s writing, which the battle had blocked.
If we listen, Ukrainian battle poetry can put across to us no less than one of the love and reminiscence of what truly issues. Poetry, language, tradition and identification are very important problems for the protection of Ukraine. For individuals who to find themselves in relative protection past the borders of Ukraine, however nonetheless going through the Russian danger, in all probability now could be the time, as in Ukraine, to attract inspiration from poetic traditions.
Even supposing, because the British poet Alfred Tennyson wrote, we’re “weakened by time and fate,” we will be able to nonetheless to find inside of ourselves
“will to seek, fight, find and not give in anything”.
In France, Editions du Tripode That is how we keep unfastened, Iarina Chornohouz. Arthur Drone’s songs have been printed via Bleu et Jaune.
