The Essay: Words for War

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The Essay: Words for War: We Come from Odesa - Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky

We Come from Odesa - Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky

Words for War

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Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky recently fled Odesa. 'We have to write, to give witness.'

Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky fled Odesa in late March. Both leading poets, Boris from from the days of Samizdat. For Ludmila, the war from 2014 forced poets to remaster language.

A week of Essays from Ukrainian poets who have responded to war in their country since 2014. Many of Ukraine’s poets had to grapple with language (Russian or Ukrainian) and make sense of the hybrid war since 2014 that brought bloody division as Russian backed separatists and the Ukrainian military fought over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of East Ukraine. Now total war is upon them and many have been forced to flee. Here are their words.

Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky became refugees from Odesa at the end of March. Both leading poets, Boris began writing in the days of Samizdat and the ossified Soviet state and has never stilled his voice against the malevolent state. For his wife Ludmila, the hybrid war from 2014 plunged many Ukrainian poets into a state of innocence, a second childhood, in which they confronted the need of speaking a new language. Boris was one of his country's foremost poets expressing himself in Russian. Since 2014 he has learned to write in Ukrainian with poems such as Explosions are the New Normal. 'We have to write. You have to speak, to give witness.'

Reader Neil McCaul

Producer, Mark Burman

For more information on those poets featured in The Essay and others go to https://www.wordsforwar.com/

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Hybrid war came to Ukraine in 2014. Its poets have been responding to it ever since.

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