Authors

Discussion

The nature of poetry at the time of Russia's existential war against Ukraine seemed very different from that of a time of peace. The war turned Ukrainian poets into witnesses, diarists and chroniclers of the war, its atrocities and the resilience of the people. After 24 February, Ukrainian poets expanded the space for aesthetic reflection on poetry and its traditional meanings, proving that poetry cannot wait indefinitely for its revival “after Auschwitz”. Ukrainian poetry did not cease to exist when Auschwitz began for Ukrainians, but it changed and became a testimony. The metaphor of contemporary Ukrainian poetry has undergone a transformation on its way to approaching the genre of testimony. As the Ukrainian writer and translator Halyna Kruk explains in her speech at the opening of the Berlin Poetry Festival in June 2022, metaphors have lost their power in the face of what is actually experienced. The voice of the diarist of war experiences has been the most important feature of literary expression since February 2022, as well as evidence that art can generate vital energy in the midst of the genocidal Russian war on Ukraine. The multiplicity of war experiences through the prism of directly personal voices and life stories told by Ukrainian women poets is widely reflected on the social platforms of the Internet.

In my paper I’ll be exploring women's poetic testimonies to the experience of war – both printed and posted in virtual space – and the role of literary production in framing the testimonies of what war does to the perception of language (linguistic decomposition and a “dictionary of war”), how it sounds in women's voices through the themes of empathy, betrayal and survival.