signed copy [dasein: defence of presence]

“Ms. Chornohuz’s story is emblematic of a poetry boom that has swept Ukraine during the war with Russia.” – The New York Times
 
“One of Ukraine’s most celebrated poets.” – The Guardian
 
Yaryna Chornohuz (born 1995) is an internationally celebrated poet and corporal in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. She volunteered as a paramedic in 2019, joined the Marines the following year, and took part in fierce battles in defence of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion launched on 24 February 2022. She was joint winner of the Taras Shevchenko Prize for Literature, Ukraine’s most prestigious cultural award, in 2024, for [dasein]. She has published two other poetry collections. She currently serves as a drone pilot and regularly undertakes public readings and other activism and advocacy in Ukraine and overseas.
 
 
Poetry from the front lines of the Russo-Ukrainian war
 
What does it mean to defend human presence against a genocidal force that intends to destroy it? 
 
Yaryna Chornohuz’s poems are meditations from the front line of this defence. They are acts of testimony to pain and loss in war yet also to the hope that underlies Ukrainian resistance. 
Faced with an existential threat, those who choose to fight paradoxically have no choice at all for without defence, there is no survival. 
 
A belief in the immeasurable value of human lives inspires Yaryna Chornohuz’s military service and poetry alike. 
As she says, “We could be killed but we are leaving behind our poetry so we can continue to be a nation through our literature and our art.”
 
Yaryna Chornohuz’s poetry is urgent reading for all who are not yet under direct attack by brutal tyranny but who wish to understand what it means to defend individual and collective forms of existence.
 
we’ll never ever ever
lose hope
in our beauty and strength, in freedom,
and so
even left under a blanket of ash
we won’t give up
 
this, it seems, is my people’s gift