More than 10,000 applications of poems have been written by Ukrainian and foreign poets since the beginning of Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. This is the number of applications of poems submitted during the first 15 days to the portal “War Poetry”, which was created with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and the State Agency for Arts and Art Education in early March 2022.
Creativity is an effective way to understand the tragic events of the war. Poets try to express their strong feelings and emotions in poems.
All 100% of the poems are about the war. A third part of them are poems full of misunderstanding, shock, anger and hatred of the invaders. Another third of works concerns the inner experiences of characters. Such poems are full of anxiety, fear, uncertainty about the future and their lives. These are poems written by children, soldiers, volunteers in front of the front line, soldiers’ mothers, beloved girls and ordinary civilians who faced the war. Most of the poems are about the victory, the strength of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, admiration of their courage and sincere gratitude to all those who are fighting.
More than 80% of the poems are optimistic. This means that poets believe in the victory, which very accurately conveys public response. The latest results of social polls from the group “Rating” provide the same data.
10,000 verses are 7,270,151 symbols, or about 1,320,000 words. 27 volunteers, half of whom are professional editors, work daily to moderate, edit and correct this impressive number of works.
“Volunteers from all over the world help us with the translation of the portal’s interface, and we already have a collection of poems in 7 languages. So this project can be definitely called international,” mentioned Oleksandr Tkachenko, Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.
Portal “War Poetry” is being filled with new poems every hour. Recently appeared an opportunity for the authors to indicate the place where the poem was written. So, we have poems from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, Mykolayiv, Volnovakha written in the basements for protection in Mariupol and during the evacuation from Chernihiv by ‘Ukrzaliznytsia’.
“You can follow the chronology of the war reading poems – so subtly and sensitively react creative people to the course of events. As for the form of poetic works, it is mostly poetry, prose (white prose) works are very few. The most popular way of rhyming in the stanza of Ukrainian poets is cross (abab). The most common type of stanza is a quatrain (a stanza of four lines).
There is a legendary phrase about the direction of the ship about 1 time in 20 poems. Thanks to our poets, now this quote is finally immortalized in the Ukrainian culture, ” mentioned Maryna Yusyn, moderator.
Poems of the highest artistic level will obtain a confession as “Editor’s Choice”. Currently 112 poems have obtained it. Let us first remind that the best poems will form a collection which will be published with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.
For easier navigation among the collection of poems we added several filters:
● “Random” – displays poems in random order so that regular visitors of the site always see different works;
● “Popular” – displays the poems which received the most “likes”;
● “New” – displays poems in chronological order;
● “Editor’s Choice” – displays favorite poems of the editor, and the authors whose works fall into this category, receive a letter with a link to their e-mail addresses.
Poems in Ukrainian, Russian, English, French, Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian have already been published. And the interface is translated into English, Estonian, Spanish, Icelandic, Slovak, Danish, German and Greek.
Currently, the portal continues its work and is waiting for new talents. Join: https://warpoetry.mkip.gov.ua
