Russia's invasion of Ukraine has fueled a boom in poetry. Ukrainian poets who have taken up arms to defend their country are capturing life in the trenches. And soldiers are turning to poetry to help them cope with their war experiences. DW's Sonia Phalnikar reports.
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00:00Now, I often think about the disappointment that the world turned out to be nothing like
00:07I imagined it would.
00:11That every war ends with a walk to the cemetery.
00:15Dmitry Lazutkin is part of Ukraine's new generation of military poets, using free verse
00:22to document the raw realities of war.
00:26Dmitry was a poet and journalist before the war.
00:29He joined a frontline brigade last summer and wrote on his phone during breaks in the
00:34fighting.
00:37Every poem broke through my silence.
00:40Serving in a unit on the battlefield is basically a constant attempt to order the chaos that's
00:45happening around you and the chaos that's inside you.
00:50Dmitry, who was recently appointed as a spokesman for the defence ministry, says his poetry
00:56channels the daily tragedies of Ukraine's grinding conflict.
01:02Rolling Stones is about a soldier whose wife calls him from Germany, saying she and their
01:07children are not going back.
01:10He asks his commander to send him to the front.
01:13What are we fighting for?
01:15For the lines at the Polish border?
01:16For the stability of European democracy?
01:19For the rage of the generals?
01:20For the faith of the dead?
01:21For the wheezing in our lungs?
01:25War poetry readings like this one attract civilians and veterans.
01:33Vasyl Mulyk has long been a pilot.
01:37Now he's also a poet.
01:39He's on leave for a few days reading his work.
01:42It was important to experience these moments that Vasyl lived through in the war, which
01:47we here are far away from and cannot feel.
01:52High-quality poetry like this takes me through catharsis.
01:55It makes things a bit easier.
01:58I don't want to rely on antidepressants or turn to drink like many other veterans.
02:04I left the army three months ago.
02:10Yaryna Chornohus was a poet before signing up as a combat medic.
02:15This is my comrades, this is our position.
02:18She writes from the front lines.
02:22The world has rallied for the defense of this land.
02:25And even if there is something after this, even then, we will probably never truly need
02:30anything else.
02:33She nearly stopped completely when several of her colleagues were killed in the first
02:37months of the full-scale invasion.
02:40When you are silent about very tough stuff, this silence makes these terrible things of
02:49war much bigger.
02:51But when you can talk about this, when you can talk and write poetry even about the hardest
02:56experience, it means it could be survived.
02:59So poetry definitely makes us stronger.
03:03Stronger but still vulnerable.
03:06Many of Yaryna's fellow war poets have been killed.
03:10One of the most famous was Maksim Krizov.
03:13He died in combat near Kharkiv last year.
03:16It was painful for me as for all of the society.
03:22Maksim Krizov is buried here, in his hometown of Rivne.
03:27A street in Kyiv is named in his honor.
03:30It will be left to other soldier poets to document the rest of the war.
03:35And one day, it's end.