'Poetry Is An Opportunity To Understand You Are Not Alone' | Ukranian Poet Maya Dimerli

I wrote everything I could about the war back in 2014-16. It was poetry. Since poets have a highly developed imagination, it is not necessary to experience what can be easily imagined. And so, as the war moved towards us, it became clear that what was written earlier surprisingly coincided with the impending reality…I have been writing almost nothing about the war lately. I write about things that are important to me and to my fellow citizens, and I do this mainly on Facebook. I also think that for now I can focus on helping others write, helping children write. Last year, together with the poet Ilya Kaminsky (USA)—an Odessa native who, since the full-scale Russian invasion, began to support Odessa writers, museums, wounded defenders and internally displaced persons—we decided to create a poetry competition and literary studio for children. The editor-in-chief of the local newspaper Evening Odessa Oleg Suslov joined us, as did the administration of the centralised library network for children. At first, we positioned ourselves as a competition for Odessans and children who came to Odessa from other Ukrainian cities as refugees. However, a couple of days before the deadline for accepting competition entries, children from outside Odessa began to send us poems. Those cities were subjected to even more powerful shelling than Odessa. We decided to accept everyone.

So, we learnt from the children that many of them began writing poetry after the full-scale invasion began. For them, it is a kind of ritual. They believe that when they write poetry, it protects them and their loved ones from death. So, poetry helps us to live through the dark times, which many countries, including ours, has plunged into today. They made us understand this strong side of poetry.

Poetry and prose are not only acts of resistance and survival, they also give you an opportunity to understand that you are not alone, that your honesty and desire to share thoughts and feelings can help someone to survive in difficult circumstances. And the support that we receive from colleagues from other cities shows that literature is an incredibly important part of human life. Children can feel that they are not limited to their city or country, they are part of a huge world.

This war has changed us. The full-scale Russian aggression has especially affected Ukrainian society. The unity that distinguished us and inspired the whole world during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, as well as after 2022, has gradually begun to weaken. Today, we are not a monolithic society, which we were, despite cultural and linguistic differences, but we are also balancing on the brink of serious internal conflicts artificially fuelled by ethno-nationalists, professional ‘patriots’ and, alas, at the government level.

We also have certain problems with freedom of speech and human rights. All these problems have not been discussed for a long time, since people understand that all efforts should be directed to supporting our military. However, the further we go, the more acute the issue of cultural and linguistic differences becomes. It is very difficult to conduct a debate in the current circumstances, since opponents are guided mainly by emotional arguments. And all this is understandable. We are all in the midst of a terrible and unfair trauma.

Many are driven to despair by the fact that they are unable to influence the situation at the front, to stop the war. Some lost loved ones in the war, others lost their homes, and in order to feel that they are somehow participating in the fight, people are trying to find enemies within, among fellow citizens.

In Ukraine, air raid sirens sound almost every day. They sound regularly at night. This does not necessarily mean that shelling will follow, but you wake up. Those who are especially afraid for their lives, for their children, pack their things and run to a bomb shelter, if there is one nearby. But many stay at home and use the two-wall rule. If you are in the hallway, you are protected by two walls on both sides. This reduces the risk of dying if a rocket or shrapnel hits your home.

Of course, in the cities in the east of the country, which are closer to the line of combat, all this is much harsher than in the cities in western Ukraine.

So, at night, when the sirens sound, you run somewhere. When the all-clear is given, you return home. After a while, the air raid alarm sounds again. You wake up again and run. This can continue several times a night. And in the morning, you have to get up and go to work. And so, every day, you work. And every night you hardly sleep. We know that one of the most sophisticated tortures that is used on prisoners is not letting them sleep. From the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, I decided that I would not run anywhere. But even this does not help much, because the loud sound of the siren and explosions still do not let me sleep.

Another part of women’s lives today here is the work that everyone chooses to do voluntarily. For example, on a day off, you can join the volunteers and weave camouflage nets, or make trench candles so that our soldiers on the front lines can cook for themselves in the field. During winter, you can knit warm clothes and send them to the front. You can also announce fundraisers on social networks to buy necessary uniforms, drones, and medicines. You organise concerts, give lectures, conduct master classes with one goal—collect donations for the front. You can help displaced persons adapt to your city, find work, keep their children busy. This is what the lives of many of our women look like today.

I do not want to think that peace and war are just seasons that come one after the other. But I grew up in constant memory of World War II. We were told about World War I. We also had a civil war and the Revolution of 1917 on our territory. And at some point, I thought, we have been living without war for so long (in our country), humanity had really matured and wars will gradually become a thing of the past. And now we see that a new war is on, and we do not really know at what stage of it we are in for ourselves and, perhaps, for the whole world.

I have lived only half a century, but I have seen times of peace and war. The world is ancient and history shows that war is a normal state for humanity. Ancient texts assure that there have already been golden eras of humanity, and promise the advent of a golden era in the future. Perhaps 5,000 years is too short a period for times of war to be replaced by times of peace and prosperity. But who knows, maybe we are living at the very end of an era of cruelty and barbarity!

Even though I have no reason to think so, I believe that eternal peace is quite possible.