'If we don't tell stories for ourselves, our enemies tell them for us.'
3 poems by Lyuba Yakimchuk
I cannot speak of what is happening, but from the outside. These thoughts are merely an attempt to form a language with events that we perceive, once removed. Nobody can, except for the dead, because they know now the absolution of their fear. This is the irony of war. In an era that is dominated by things that ceaselessly scatter our attention, even war takes the form of a distraction, another social media trend. A grim tweet along the lines of “Is this how it is going to be? Crisis after crisis?” made me wonder whether it was always like this.
There were ‘critiques’ of the sensationalist turn in news making - many people took umbrage at the use of the word “unprecedented” in the context of the current conflict being executed by Putin’s Russia, on Ukraine. This has happened throughout history, they screamed. What would the woman cleaning up broken glass in Kyiv singing the Ukranian national anthem in a strangled voice, under the threatening lens of the camera, say to this, I wondered. Many people, mostly American twitterati attempted to cancel the poet Ilya Kaminsky, who is a Ukranian refugee, for his poem that goes to the very heart of the First World inability to connect with the despair of war victims. This poem was shared widely, and ironically, the backlash that ensued only shows the indifference that the poem documents and satirises - a poem written many years ago. In fact the anthology Dancing in Odessa references, among other things, ‘immigrant survivor guilt’ and the trauma that war induced on Kaminsky’s own life, and his loved ones:
But comments like “Girl, Read the Room” (implicating one of the celebrities sharing the poem) and “If I read that Ilya Kaminsky poem one more time…” continued to explode into virality on twitter, once again taking the focus off the real problem, something that the poem actually does with great sensitivity. Kaminsky himself has been concerned with the safety of his folks still in Ukraine, and is sharing updates and pertinent ground reporting about the war.
Meanwhile, new heights of absurdity were scaled when random videos from youtube with flying planes, and fireworks, were shared by mainstream news channels and “political commentators” as war reportage (including Times now, Republic, Zee). Some of them even shared video game footage of warplanes flying out of the sky to attack civilian populations!
***
Last night it rained continuously. The wind rent the air with a searching disdain, and all night I heard the creaking of doors and windows, punctuated by thunder. I thought of the people in Kyiv who talked of the awful ‘ruin’ and ‘blood’, the people ‘too afraid to sleep’. The Kyiv metro has turned into a massive bomb shelter, and more than 100,000 people have fled the city already. There is shelling and gunfire in the suburbs. We listen to testimonies and reports, “happy” in our distance as Kaminsky might have said. It occured to me, as I saw the Ukranian President’s message to his country, that as the media arrived on the scene, finding real people telling real stories of fear, the simple assertion of presence was enough. We are all here, he said.
I searched for this presence, and found the overarching fear of death, but also the tremendeous resilience of the people. The Ukranian poet Lyuba Yakimchuk, whose collection Apricots of Donbas is a sharp, artful piece of writing that explores a range of experiences escalated by the war, talks about the power of narrative, and the importance of poetry in a context of despair:
“New strong narratives [can lead] to life-changing things… For centuries, Ukrainians have told each other the story of being victims…because of Soviet propaganda, Ukrainians believe that the heroes are dead people, which is very dangerous...
The Russian political narration of history is usually just a story – fiction that is based on disinformation. I think that new Ukrainian stories are changing this narrative now. If we don't tell stories for ourselves, our enemies tell them for us.”
Her long poem Apricots of Donbas starts with the line, "Where no more apricots grow, Russia starts.". The complex relationship that Ukranians feel against their oppressors, the Russians, is a mark of the multi-frontal long standing assault on the people, that has precipitated in the current catastrophe. I share with you some excerpts from an illuminating article that includes Yakimchuk’s reflections:
On February 24, 2022, Yakimchuk said she woke at 6 a.m. to the sound of shelling in Kyiv.
"I have covered the windows with scotch tape to prevent glass [from] flying. Our neighbours came to us because our house is more secure," she said.
"We hear civil defence sirens here, the shelling sounds and the helicopters."
Before the invasion started, she and her husband attended civilian military training, completed their first aid kits, stocked up on food, installed a solid fuel boiler and an electric generator.
"Our plan is to stay in Kyiv and try to be helpful. Tomorrow, we are going to donate blood for Ukrainian soldiers. I guess it won't be easy for us, but … Putin's regime will fall apart," she said. "We will be witnesses."
Oksana Maksymchuk one of the translators of Yakimchuk’s Apricot of Donbas, shares another side to this narrative:
"I was looking through my Facebook and seeing what people and friends in other cities have been posting. We have this former friend in the Luhansk People's Republic, we used to read poetry together, we used to drink together," said Maksymchuk.
"She said that all of these years we have been praying not for peace, but for victory. So to her, it was never about stopping the violence or somehow resuming this return to normalcy. I think that had been painful to her. What she wanted was the continuation of this struggle of Russia against what she perceives as a hostile world."
Today’s post contains three poems by Lyuba Yakimchuk. Her poem Caterpillar, not shared here, is excrutiating in its dark description of a girl being raped by invading soldiers. Prayer, a personal lamentation of the loss of war is hard-hitting even in its playful overturning of ‘Our Father..’ that it uses as frame. Yakimchuk’s ideas of narrative negotiation with a crisis-ridden reality laced with the hopeful reimagination of a future that accepts the destiny of war is a monumental act of ‘witnessing’ to what she sees as a certain victory over Putin and his forces of evil. Like the many artists and cultural activists who are bravely protesting and standing their ground, the sensitive and resilient presence that she embodies is inspiring. I cannot imagine the trauma through which such strength of character has been forged.
If the poetry, and the commentary, resonate with you, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’. (Matlab, if you can’t, that’s also fine, obviously. This is a free newsletter)
Note: Those, not in India, who’d like to support the work I do at Poetly, do write to me - poetly@pm.me. (Paypal seems to have left the building, still figuring it out)
You can write to me, waise bhi, if you feel like it :)
Thanks for reading Poetly! Do subscribe if you are not reading this in your inbox. Cheers!
Share this post…