“The Most Urgent of Dispatches”: One Language by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, Sheffield, Smith|Doorstop Books, 2022

By Sarah Montin

In his poem “Resistance”, written in March 2022, Simon Armitage draws on the collective memory of previous wars to comment on the recent Russian invasion in Ukraine. Quoting Philip Larkin’s celebrated “MXCXIV”, the Poet Laureate inscribes his response to the conflict in Ukraine in that eternal palimpsest that is war poetry:

It’s war again: a family
carries its family out of a pranged house
under a burning thatch.
The next scene smacks
of archive newsreel: platforms and trains
(never again, never again)

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A Short Guide to Successful Gardening in the Time of War

By Olga Kornyushyna, in loving memory of Andriy Romanov, killed in action April 26, 2024

Courtesy by Olga Kornyushyna©

Between the day we received Olga’s story and today, the gardening company in Odessa mentioned in the text was destroyed during the Russian air strike on May 1, 2024. Thousands of plants and trees were burned, warehouses and offices destroyed. Luckily there were no casualties among the employees. The owners of the company released a video of the aftermath of the attack. 

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A testimony from the Ukrainian front: “Crimes” by Ivan Choopa

Translated by Mariya Bahriy and Olga Kornyushyna

Ivan Choopa©

After each assault, the Russian occupiers would take a break from two to three days for pulling up the reserves, delivering more ammunition, and picking up their stiffs and wounded. The stiffs often remained unclaimed. The wounded would be picked up more often than not, but not on the regular basis.

If you caught this break, it was possible to daringly fuck around in the tree lines. The key was not to get too cheeky and keep out of the enemy’s line of sight. Or else.

Sometimes this moment of comfort came from our side as well. Then the silence was even scarier than hearing all those various bangs from both sides. On just such a day, we ventured into tree line number 18 with one aim only – to steal something…

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