We Were Here

Poetry from the front lines of the Ukrainian-Russian war

Artur asks why we need poetry and answers with poems and a further explanation

'For a long time I had no answer to this question. I told myself that I didn’t know. After the full-scale invasion began, I stopped writing. Since the age of seventeen, I had believed that literature was my purpose in life, I thought that being a writer was something that carried weight and hadmeaning. And suddenly it turned out that there was no meaning at all. What can you write when children are being pulled from under the rubble? In what order do you arrange words to ease the pain? I decided that writing was pointless.

But I was wrong. Time needed to pass because it is impossible to write about today in the old language. It had to be reinvented. I had to lose faith in writing, admit that literature was helpless, begin hating all writers, forget every poem. I had to give up on language completely. And start from the beginning.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Now I have the answer. Why do we need poetry in a time of war? Why do we keep writing these poems, reading them, sharing them with each other like communion wafers or cigarettes? Why do we sometimes need to read something to feel love or even hate more fiercely? Why do we need poems?

To feel less lonely.'