Poet and radio journalist Olena Huseinova from Kyiv on life and art in a war zone
Olena Huseinova is a poet and radio journalist from Kyiv. When she visited Czechia recently to present the work of Ukrainian poets, we invited her to Radio Prague’s studio to talk about her life in the midst of war and the importance of art in coming to terms with suffering and loss.
Olena the saying “When the cannons roar, the muses are silent” is well-known. Is it true?
“Yes, it is true, but also, something else is loud, when the muses are silent. I am not sure that everything that is being done in Ukrainian literature, art or culture since February 24 is inspired by muses. It is driven by something else – emotions such as rage, fear and bravery.”
Is there more anger in your poetry, and in other people’s poetry now?
“There is a lot of anger in our poetry, but also a lot of sorrow, love and hope – because it is impossible to live in wartime when you have just rage and anger. You feel a rage and anger because you may lose something that is very important for you, something that you love dearly. This applies to people but also cities, houses and simple things that made up our lives. When the war escalated half of Kyiv was evacuated and relocated and people left so many important, precious things behind; things they had collected for years; things that had been handed down by grandparents and so on. People feel a strong attachment to these things and they don’t know if they will ever see them again and be able to return to their former lives. That is why they are angry. Because they lost something very important, something that is part of their lives.”
There is a lot of patriotism in the country now and also a lot of sorrow. Does art –poetry and music - help people to survive, to come to terms with what is happening?
“Since February 26, I have been caught up in a marathon of news. Day shifts are six hours and night shifts are 12 hours. And it was difficult to imagine that such things as poetry or music could help, because the story was about real life and surviving. But since I am a journalist specializing in the cultural sphere, it was impossible for me not to use art and poetry during my entire broadcasts. So I read a lot of poetry at night for people and I put a lot of classical, Ukrainian and world music, but I was not sure if it was helping or not.
“Then, in the summer, one of our listeners who had been in Bucha in March and who managed to escape to safety, wrote me a letter to say that the one thing that helped her to stay sane was listening to my night poetry sessions on the radio. So poetry, music, literature –it all works somehow, it helps people, although I don’t know exactly how myself. When the war first escalated we (the radio) had a huge project with the Metropolitan Opera which held a big concert for Ukraine. It took place in the evening, starting at around 7pm, in New York and we broadcast it at night. And we were also not sure if it is fitting for people who are surviving, people who have Russians near their doors, to listen to classical music playing somewhere faraway in New York. But then we understood that it was a huge gesture of solidarity and people were happy to listen to the music and to know that somewhere in another part of the world they are in people’s hearts and minds and they are sending them music.”
On Czech Television we saw a newsreel where a Ukrainian soldier was strumming his guitar in a short break between the fighting. So it clearly helps them to carry on.
“Yes, I think that is the reason why art is in our life.”
What about you – have you written any poetry since the war started?
“Yes, it was unexpected, because it seemed like there was no time and no space for poetry in our lives. But it happened that I found, in The Guardian, a long poem by the Pulitzer-winner Ben Okri, a poem dedicated to Katya - a six-year old girl who is surviving in a shelter in Kyiv. I was surprised, because I was not prepared for the fact that people from safe countries would start to write poetry about Ukraine. And this was not a poem from someone looking down on us from a birds’ eye view. It was very connected with what is happening with us and I felt it was like a poem written for me. You always think that people who are not on your situation cannot understand you. But it was like this poet, Ben Okri, was near me and he felt everything that we were going through –the girls, boys, women and men who are in shelters at this time. And I started to translate this poem during my night shifts – it has a lot of parts, 12 or 15, and I translated six of them and read them on the air on my night shifts. I wanted to write to Ben Okri to tell him that I made this translation and I want to publish it, but I still haven’t got around to that. But after that I started to write poetry myself on my night shifts. I had some ideas, some images which I put on paper – I write by hand - and then I played with them and turned them into poetry. There are not a lot of them, but I have a few and one was even translated into English.”
Did it help you to write the poetry? Was it therapeutical? Did it release some of the pain when you wrote it?
“I think so, yes, but I am not sure that poetry should be a therapy. I think poetry is a much bigger issue than just self-therapy. I think the main function of our Ukrainian poetry now is testimony of the times. It is easy to read the news. When you speak to people abroad you can explain what happened in Bucha, or in Izium or the streets of Kyiv in March and they will listen and understand, rationally. But at the end of August I attended my first poetry festival since the start of the war. It was in Helsinki in a big hall where I read my poetry in Ukrainian and a Latvian poet read my poem in English. It was the first time it had been read in public and when I finished I knew that everyone had understood what it was about, despite the fact that it has a lot of metaphors, is quite grammatical and has allusions to Paul Celan one of the most important 20th century poets for understanding the Holocaust. Everyone there understood what the poem was about, and I did not need to read them the news about what happened in Bucha or Kyiv. I just read this poetry and it said more than a news report could have done.”
You brought the work of Ukrainian poets to this country – how was it received?
“I have a long story about my poetry in the Czech Republic. My poems were translated into Czech in 2014 by Maria Eleshenko and I have had a couple of readings in the Czech Republic since then. And I also give talks for people who love poetry in this country. This time I read not only my poems, but the work of other Ukrainian poets as well because it was important for me to create a bigger picture and bring all these voices to the Czech Republic. I read poets who are writing now, for example the work of a well-known young female poet Yarina Chornoguz who is in the army now. She is about twenty-eight, I believe, and she in a marine officer. She is a philologist and she had a book of poetry published last year. Now she’s finished a new collection of poems which was written during the war when she was on the frontline. It was very important for me to read her work because it is very special and there is so little fiction in it. She just put the things she saw around her every day on paper and it turned out to be great poetry. I read the work of several other young poets, but I also chose to read the work of two “old” poets from the middle of the 20th century, from the 1960s, Mykola Vinhranovskyi and Leonid Kyselov. And although this is poetry written in the 1960s it is so fresh and so topical, it says so much about us now that I was really happy to have the opportunity to read it.”
You said that you were presenting different voices, different poets – has the poetry become more similar because of the war? Or are the voices very different?
“You know there is this thing about poetry –when poetry is bad it is very similar, all bad poems are similar. Good poems cannot be similar, just because good poets have their own voices. We still have these different voices, but some common things appear, for example we have all –to a great extent – become more publicist in our poetry, we are connected with reality, with all these news issues about the war and there is not so much space left for metaphors and other fictional things. The common feature in Ukrainian poetry now is that it tends to be very meme-sic. Sometimes you can just write down what you are seeing and it sounds like poetry. For instance, when a missile hits a children’s playground, and you write a simple line about it, it looks like poetry, but it’s actually a horrible reality.”
In 2016 you published a collection of poems called Super Heroes –what made you write it?
“Actually, it was in 2013 before the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine and we were all very depressed and pessimistic at this time. We thought we had lost the chance to be part of Europe forever. Those were the times of Yanukovych, the times of corruption, very incompetent ministers of culture and education. You felt that you could change nothing in this country. All you could do is observe your country sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of something that is very Soviet and which you disagree with. And then, I and my husband started to joke about needing a Super Hero to change everything. So we joked about that a lot and saw it in films and comics strips and then I realized that what was an in-house joke would be a good subject for a contemporary poem. So I wrote a couple of texts. And then the situation changed and our friends turned out to be the “super heroes” who could change the reality. So it was my irony regarding something that was not irony. That’s why this book appeared and it has great illustrations by Art Studio Agrafka, Romana Romanishin and Andrij Lesiv and today it is possible to buy the book in Czech bookstores. It is called The War which Changed Rondo and is bi-lingual Czech and Ukrainian. They are very conceptual in publishing books and they did a good job of depicting the story. In fact the book won several awards for illustrations, including in South Korea. I am happy to see the book in Czech bookstores. It is very beautiful and very important.”
How has the war changed your outlook on life? Has it made every moment more precious?
“Yes, we had this feeling that we have to write more, to work more, to have more time with our lovers, our beloved people - because everything could end at any moment. But, I think we are past that now. For the past nine years we have felt that war is very close and could break out at any time. Now we have over nine months of a full-scale war and I think we have already lost this feeling that we have to use each moment and live every moment to the full, because life always wants to be normal and everyday tasks make it normal. I was sure that it is impossible to get used to war, but it looks like we have become used to it. We have a lot of jokes, we have a lot of habits, how to behave during air raids. We have these places between two walls –if we are at home – and these places look like small spas. There are candles, wine and such things and we are used to spending time there. When there are air raids for five or six hours you just sit in these corridors between two walls and talk. We talk with my husband, have some wine and have a small party. A lot of people have such habits – things they do when the sirens go off. They work, or have these very strange dinners and very strange “good things”.
“I think that we will understand how the war changed us much later. When the war is over, we will recognize how it changed us. And, probably we will not see it ourselves, because we will not have these sources of reflection, but someone who comes after us –will understand that we are something like a lost generation with all our traumas and war memories and they will treat us accordingly, but now I do not think we feel this change very much. We are more sensitive and more traumatized, but I don’t think we feel too different.”
But it is in your poetry. It will be captured there forever –those feelings…Olena could you read me a bit of your poetry in English?
“Yes, this is from a cycle, three poems under one umbrella. It is called “On the Surface” and I will read the last one, written for my friends, who had to leave Kyiv when the war started.
On the Surface
Lord of our grasses and winds
find for my friends
in the trunks of their cars
in the pockets of their
suitcases, packed in half an hour
the wedding photo of their grannies,
who managed to marry in 1939,
copper-nickel spoons
polished to a silver sheen,
hydazepam
“Olenka” chocolate,
passport, marriage certificate,
military ID,
poppy memory,
snow part.
Lord of all the routes and relocations
find for strangers
a safe road, a green corridor, a place in a compartment,
(and it doesn’t work out, in a platzcart)
clean water, hot food,
(and if it doesn’t work out, then cold one)
make them invisible when strangers are searching for them
make them big enough when I am searching for them
help to get them on the phone, deliver messages,
work without weekends.
Lord of my alphabet
save my dead
write down their names
in Ukrainian.
