IRYNA SHUVALOVA: "WRITING POETRY IS DANCING THE INNER DANCE OF ONE'S BODY"

The idea for this interview—or rather, a double interview: mine with Iryna Shuvalova and Iryna Shuvalova with me—came about suddenly. I recall having a conversation with Kateryna Kazimirova about poetry, favorite authors, and the importance of hearing diverse voices in the broad field of Ukrainian poetry. It was then that we realized the need to document it, to turn it into a text. Later, this idea resurfaced: in May 2024, Iryna Shuvalova and I had a joint tour of Italy, and during our conversations between performances and train rides, we touched upon many topics that we decided to discuss in this interview—some of them summarizing what we had spoken about, while others only hinting at points of contact for future discussions. After all, no conversation is ever exhaustive; instead, it serves as an important space for understanding and dialogue.

Iryna and I talked about war and privacy, poetry and physicality, otherness and difference, poetry as a place of encountering another person's otherness, and the limits of expression. We also spoke about life experiences in various spaces and space as a part of the "self" for each of us, loss and gain as components of human existence, performativity and resistance strategies, as well as colonial legacies, trauma, and the tools of poetry. However, the most important thing is that this conversation itself serves as an example of a shared space where we can talk about difficult topics without fear, listen and be heard, despite all our differences, varied experiences, and dissimilarities in writing and life practices. Ukrainians are diverse, but this diversity is not only about complexity; it's also about strength, especially the strength of love. We also briefly discussed Iryna's new poetry collection "endsongs," which was published this summer by the Old Lion Publishing House. Because finality and the sense of things ending have become so abundant in our lives, and each day we are learning how to navigate them.

— In May, we had a joint performance in Turin, and one of the audience members noted the difference in our poetic approaches, mentioning that your poems are filled with personal reflections and written from the 'I' perspective. Why do you think you write in that way?

— Once, a poet from the Netherlands asked me what my books were about, who the characters were. That’s when I realized that my poems don’t really have characters. They’re either about me or through me. When I reflect on why that is, I think it’s because I started writing at a very young age. I was one of those kids who happily rhymed while running around the house, with my mother lovingly writing it all down. At that time, poetry was a form of play for me. And when you approach poetry with that childlike playfulness, you create stories, worlds, plots, and characters, imitating the voices of the poets you love. So, when I began to discover my own poetic voice in my late teenage years, after years of writing in many different voices, the process of finding my own voice was also a turn toward a deeply personal style of writing—a way of expressing myself as directly as possible.

—  How has the full-scale war affected the personal nature of your writing?

—  In fact, this is exactly what I’m exploring in my work: how war invades personal space, how it disrupts privacy. War makes it impossible to stay isolated in your own world, taking away any sense of comfort or security. At this point, privacy has been dismantled—on one hand, I’m drawing from my own experiences, but on the other, I’m part of a larger community suffering from aggression. So, my writing now exists somewhere between the personal and the public. This is true for much of the writing about war today.

War has a collective impact, but it also brings a deeply personal kind of pain.

— Your emotional state during the first days of the full-scale war is reflected in the "Kyiv-Nanjing" war poems. Could you share more about that and how you were feeling at the time?

— These poems were written between February 24 and 26, 2024. At that time, I was in Nanjing, while my family and friends were in Kyiv. I didn’t understand what was happening... with my city, my country, or the people I loved. Like so many others, it was an experience of fragmented reality, of living in pieces. At first, I didn’t think I could write anything—there was only the need to capture those fragments. The "Kyiv–Nanjing" cycle grew out of notes I was making on my phone: I was jotting down phrases and lines, but I didn’t initially think of them as poems. It was only later that I realized they were forming into some kind of poetry.

This attempt to gather and make sense of my experiences is very characteristic of my writing. But our experiences are never just our own, as we inevitably let other people into our private worlds. And with war, it invades that private space without permission. It literally or figuratively breaks down the door and enters your home, even if you’re living in China, on Mars, or anywhere else. At that point, you no longer have a choice—you have to face that experience, whether or not you choose to write about it.

— How do you perceive this violence and the breaking down of doors in your poetic language?

— Language is inherently flexible, but like everything else, it has its limits. Imagine language as a vine that bends and bends until it eventually snaps. Since the full-scale invasion, I've noticed a kind of fracture in my writing, with new internal fissures appearing. This deformation is ongoing. I feel a need to write differently, but I’m still uncertain about what this new direction will look like once my current language fully breaks down and something new emerges.

Working with my Norwegian translators has helped me partially understand where this flexibility in my writing comes from. During my PhD, I studied how folk songs about previous wars are reactivated and reinterpreted in the context of current war — how they can become essential for expressing new traumas. Now, as I discuss my texts with others who view them through the lens of translation, I realize that these folk song techniques have subtly influenced my writing—affecting rhythm, repetition, phonetics, and syntax.

— Let’s return to your use of the “I” in your poems. Why is this particular form of poetic expression important to you? After all, you can write about yourself using “you,” “we,” or terms like “this woman,” which are also common in Ukrainian poetry.

— Writing through the “I” feels the most natural to me. It’s crucial for me to speak directly.

Poetry, for me, is a realm of profound honesty, especially with oneself.

Everything I express in my poetry is primarily for my own understanding. I’m one of those people who form their thoughts or find solutions during the act of speaking. I seldom enter a conversation with a fully formed idea. Thoughts emerge through the act of speaking. The same applies to my poetry. I write to gain insight into certain things. It’s not that I first gain understanding and then sit down to write about it. The understanding unfolds during the writing process.

Writing this way serves as a tool for exploring both myself and the world. It’s a simultaneous process—very bodily, almost anatomical, akin to a surgical procedure.

Or let me offer the analogy. Recently, I read Dan Simmons’ The Terror. In this novel, there is a rather unusual entity—a supernatural, very dangerous being, something like a beastly deity. The novel also features a shaman whose role is to communicate with this entity. However, the shaman has bitten off her own tongue because she cannot use human language; her voice is entirely devoted to this entity. So, how does she communicate? The mythical being breathes into the shaman’s mouth, causing her vocal cords to vibrate and produce sound. Essentially, one being plays the vocal cords of another as if they were a musical instrument. Simmons describes this as a unique and transgressive act, with an erotic undertone.

— It seems I’ve encountered something similar in William Golding’s The Double Tongue. There, a girl is prepared to become an oracle through whom a god speaks. However, this divine speaking through her is described as a form of oral violation, where her mouth is torn apart to accommodate what the person cannot contain, depicted as an intensely physical and extremely uncomfortable process.

It's interesting that our conversation has reached this point. I think of personal pronouns in poetry as a form of physicality in writing. It’s somewhat like relationships with clothing: some people hide themselves more, while others reveal more. But let’s shift to the broader context of your existence. How does living in multiple countries, cultures, and discourses affect the freedom of your poetic expression? How do you understand the sensation of an internal addressee, the person you’re speaking to?

— When I think of the reader, I see the interaction as an invitation into my personal space, but it’s a voluntary one. This gesture is very meaningful to me because, for a long time, I didn’t quite know how to share space with others or communicate with them. For example, in school, I realized that the things I found interesting weren’t interesting to others, and I didn’t know how to engage with them. At seven, I had read The Three Musketeers by Dumas and wanted to play musketeers with the other kids, but they told me they didn’t know who the musketeers were since they hadn’t read the book. I replied, "Well, let me tell you all about them – and you’ll see how great they are." Poetry works in the same way for me: through poems, I invite people into my world, and if they accept that invitation and find it interesting, that connection between the writer and reader brings me immense joy.

It took me a long time and a lot of effort to learn how to socialize – it wasn’t something that came naturally. But even now, daily interactions don’t always offer a sense of depth or closeness. That need for connection still lingers. Poetry, for me, is the space where I can reach for something deeply personal and touch that same depth in someone else. Both writing and reading poetry create a shared space where this kind of connection is possible. When I manage to feel that sense of kinship with someone else through poetry, it’s something truly extraordinary. Allowing someone into my personal space through poetry feels almost sacred to me. In some ways, it’s akin to a sexual act – letting someone into your intimate world is like opening up your body. I feel the same way as a reader: engaging with someone’s poetic text, immersing myself in their poetics, is an incredibly intimate experience.

For me, poetry is like a space. A space where people, separated by time, geography, and different life experiences, can come together and connect. They meet in a shared space of intimacy. A text that resonates deeply with you is something very personal, and a text you write is equally intimate.

The act of connecting in this space becomes the space itself. It’s like meeting in a sanctuary, where the sacred is not a deity but the otherness of the person who also enters this place.

Reflecting on your question, I recently realized that perhaps I shouldn’t have moved around so much, because places mean so much to me. I often use landscape metaphors – my own internal landscape and the cultural landscape of my homeland. I even talk about certain emotional states as places I inhabit. This way of thinking is very natural to how I process memories. It’s almost synesthetic: I tend to remember moments in life as a whole sensory experience, where movement, space, smell, light, and emotions all blend together. Since my experiences in specific places are tied to my inner states, I almost become a part of the spaces I live in. And when I leave them, I feel like I leave pieces of myself behind.

In one of my essays, I compared this feeling to peeling an onion. But instead of just peeling the skin, you’re peeling layers of yourself away, leaving you feeling exposed. I had expected the opposite – that I would grow through these experiences. When I first started traveling, I saw being in new places as a way of accumulating experiences. And in a sense, that’s true, because it has sharpened my perspective – both personally and poetically. Although my eyesight has been deteriorating with age...

— ...but your emotional vision has sharpened.

— Absolutely. The more different contexts you live through and experience (and I’m not talking about tourist trips), the more deeply and clearly you begin to see the world in its entirety. In a way, you become like a telescope, revealing more and more stars where there once were only dark patches in the sky. It’s a never-ending process. Understanding that even where you see nothing, something is always there—that’s incredibly valuable. But moving through spaces isn’t just about gaining; it’s also about losing. My "endsongs," which were published by The Old Lion Publishing House this summer, are about this process of loss: about leaving places behind, leaving people behind, and ultimately, constantly leaving parts of yourself behind.

— And how does that make you feel?

— Like a peeled onion, stripped down to its small core, where my truest self is concentrated, with fragments of it scattered across different places and contexts. Whenever I have the chance to return to the places that are important to me, I can feel the act of reconnecting with those lost parts of myself in a very physical, almost palpable way.

My daughter and I even have an agreement. When I pass away, I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered in all the places that have mattered to me. She always jokes that to carry out my last wish, she’d need to take a whole year off work.

— Listening to you, I thought your story might offer a valuable perspective to people who were forcibly displaced, like me, and later found it difficult to form connections with new spaces. Especially through your poems, where you talk about this ongoing process of losing and acquiring.

With that in mind, I’d like to ask you something else. You’re currently living and working in Oslo, speaking about Ukraine at artistic events and academic conferences across various countries and contexts. Yet, at the same time, you can’t fully share in the direct experience of the full-scale war with fellow Ukrainians. How do you cope with this physical separation from your homeland and your loved ones during this time?

— I’d probably say this: even without the full-scale war, I’ve come to understand that while I’m away, my Ukrainian space—that familiar, native space that shaped me—is changing. I have a specific example that made this especially clear. Once, after a long absence, I returned to Kyiv, and during that time, they had replaced the metro turnstiles with contactless payment systems. Suddenly, I realized I didn’t know how to navigate it anymore—where to place the card, how to get through. Klovska station, which I knew so well since childhood, no longer welcomed me. My space no longer lets me in.

— And this is obviously very painful. But is it more about the pain of loss, or do you allow your space, like a child, to grow without you?

— It's more about the pain. But there's something else. You see, I never had a decision to leave Ukraine permanently; I never had that as a goal at all.

— You intended to go study and then return.

— Yes. So for me, the process of distancing from the Ukrainian space happened gradually and without full awareness. I never consciously thought, "That's it, I've left and I won't return." And when that turnstile in the subway didn't open for me, the full impact of that separation suddenly hit me.

After the full-scale invasion, this feeling has taken on completely new dimensions. It’s mostly the fear that, due to our different experiences, Ukrainians within the community might struggle to connect with each other. We can all see how our community is splitting: into those who are in Ukraine and those who are not, those closer to the front lines and those farther away. And I’m only referring to civilians at this point.

— Aren't you afraid that these differences in experiences will lead to a point where you won’t have anything left to talk about, or that communication will become too difficult?

— Fortunately, I still have people, both in Ukraine and abroad, with whom I can have meaningful and deep conversations. I speak from my own experience, and they speak from theirs. We accept these differences, but at the same time, we cherish the very existence of a space where we can still talk.

Of course, I’ve lost some dear people—they’ve passed away. And there are others with whom communication has broken down. But on the flip side, my distant perspective may offer something valuable and important for someone else.

— What do you see from that perspective?

— For example, I see that we are losing the ability to truly recognize the distinctiveness of others and to listen to them in their unique way. On one side,

we share a common space of trauma where we engage with each other, but within that collective trauma, there are internal divisions—many of them. The trauma may appear to be the same, but we live through it differently, and it affects each of us in unique ways.

— Perhaps it's even easier for people to open up to you—easier to trust and share their vulnerabilities. So this difference in experiences might not only create distance but could also be a source of solace.

— I think you're right. People might feel more comfortable opening up to me about things they wouldn't dare share within the community, precisely because I live in a somewhat different context.

If you don't mind, I’d like to add something to our earlier conversation. After that incident with the subway turnstile, I began to grasp my detachment from the Ukrainian space—more specifically, my partial belonging, or perhaps more accurately, my lack of belonging. I realized that this sense of no longer belonging actually means I don’t belong anywhere now. I didn’t leave Ukraine with the intention of creating a new home somewhere else, and even now, I still don’t have one. I’ve lived in several places for years, but none of them feel like home. For me, home is still Ukraine, particularly the village in the Kyiv region where I spent every summer and where my family has lived for at least three centuries. The full-scale invasion made me realize I’m losing that home, the one I’ve clung to like a tumbleweed with fragile roots, and that’s a terrifying feeling.

It’s difficult for me to talk about this because millions of Ukrainians are losing their homes in much more extreme circumstances, either permanently or temporarily. In comparison, I have no right to complain. But I do want to acknowledge that this transition into a state of rootlessness is unsettling for me.

The nomadic lifestyle just doesn’t suit me. I have a tattoo of the Hanged Man on my back, a symbolic figure from the Tarot deck. People often ask about its meaning because the Hanged Man is not an easy image to grasp. He isn’t hanged by the neck or executed; rather, he has chosen to suspend himself by the leg (similar to the Norse god Odin, who tied himself to the tree of life with a spear) to step beyond the ordinary and seek deeper truths. This represents my own state of being in limbo—a transitional, challenging, and somewhat unsettling phase. This in-between state, this suspension, is a necessary, though often forced, pause before you can continue moving forward or rise to a new level. It’s a kind of ritual stillness, without which action is impossible. And it’s exhausting because you constantly have to find the strength to reach the next point where you can temporarily ground yourself.

— Being a poet also means existing in this ongoing state of suspension. From one poem to the next. Between what can be expressed and what remains unsaid. Between the spoken and the unspoken. Is poetry, for you, about articulating what can be said, or is it more about what can’t be spoken?

— For me, poetry lies on the boundary between the two. It’s the act of shifting that boundary between what is said and what remains unspoken.

—  Are you walking along the boundary, or moving between different sections?

— Here's a thought. In The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Irish author Lord Dunsany—a novel often seen as early fantasy—there are two worlds: the ordinary, everyday world and the mystical realm of Elfland. Between them lies a border of twilight. To enter Elfland, one must cross this twilight boundary. But one character, who desperately wants to reach Elfland, is cursed, and the twilight border keeps slipping away from him, moving farther every time he tries to approach. He spends decades wandering, always near Elfland, yet never able to reach it.

Being a poet is somewhat similar. It’s about drawing closer to the boundary between what can be articulated and what cannot, what lies beyond words. In working with language, a poet can push toward this boundary, even shift it at times, but can never fully cross over.

We are always stretching the limits of what can be expressed...

—... but the realm of the unspoken can also grow. It’s akin to maintaining a balance in a physical sense.

— Yet we remain unaware of this, so we strive to expand the realm of the spoken, even though we can never fully capture everything. The boundary between what can be spoken and what remains unspoken always eludes us.

For me, engaging with language is less about achieving a goal and more about the process itself. In a Daoist context, this reflects the idea of "wu wei," where the character "wu" signifies "not," implying nothingness or emptiness. Daoism emphasizes "non-action," avoiding unnecessary movement or interference. This is about a kind of suspended state where the suspension itself is yet to be fully realized. It represents a "not" that includes both the already "not" and the not-yet "not," and an overall "not," which allows for any "not-not." These dual spaces of presence and absence are always in balance. Grasping this balance is integral to poetic practice.

Poets work with voids and silences, navigating the unspoken while also embracing the fact that some things remain beyond expression. I once found it essential to reconcile with the existence of things that cannot be articulated, and occasionally, with the very impossibility of speaking at all.

— In several moments of our conversation, we came close to discussing the concept of corporeality. I’d like to bring it up directly now. As a starting point, I’d say that feminine writing often feels very corporeal and, in some respects, freer, though articulating this can be challenging. How do you perceive corporeality in poetry?

— I remember being asked about corporeality in my poems almost from the outset of my public readings and discussions of my so-called mature poetry, when I was around twenty. This was likely during an event at some Writers' Union. Often, these questions came from much older interlocutors, frequently men. The discussions frequently veered towards themes of violence and eroticism, suggesting that corporeality in my work was often interpreted as dark, grim, and potentially harmful. These comments were quite removed from my own perception of my poetry, which did not view corporeality as something ominous or forbidden, especially for a young woman poet. Reflecting on it now, I realize that the term "violent" in English might have accurately described my early approach to corporeality, though not in the sense of violence inflicted upon others, but rather as a powerful, potentially overwhelming force (similar to "violent storm" or "violent wind"). Many might still think that such a force is inappropriate for a woman to embrace. Fortunately, I no longer need to listen to those perspectives.

— Let me clarify—when I mention corporeality in writing, I’m referring to the presence of a connection with one’s own body in terms of sensations and how they influence what and how you write.

— To be honest, I can’t envision writing with a disembodied voice as part of a poetic practice. It’s not that I’m unaware of various poetic and philosophical traditions that place the body as something secondary or obstructive, with the focus being on higher thoughts or the soul. But I can't see myself adhering to such a tradition. I wouldn’t even want to.

My voice is inherently corporeal because it exists in and is expressed through the body. In this sense, every experience I have is deeply connected to the body. This applies to being in language and the act of speaking itself. Intimacy, sexuality, and even the concept of violence as elemental force that we discussed, are present in my writing because every experience of living and sensing is tied to corporeality. And when we discuss the boundary in poetic expression, this concept also applies to speaking and perception, which are partly defined by our physical (corporeal) abilities.

What we talked about concerning the movement of the boundary between the said and unsaid, the filled and the empty, is related to this idea. To shift this boundary, you have to fill yourself, make something present, and that’s impossible without the body. Our presence in this reality is mediated through the body.

We think through the body as well. Every brain exists within the body, and cognitive processes are facilitated by it. The body is the home of our language and thinking.

If language is the home of existence, then the body is the home of our language.

Our culture and identity—all of it resides in the body. When I discuss this, it brings to mind the old sci-fi series "Battlestar Galactica." Are you familiar with it? In the series, what remains of humanity is a kind of ark-like spaceship, filled with refugees heading from an uncertain past toward an uncertain future. In this analogy, the spaceship represents our corporeality, which carries us into the unknown future. Imagining oneself entirely outside of this vessel isn’t possible. We have no experience beyond corporeality. So, I find it intriguing to live in the body and write as someone who has one. I can’t imagine writing any other way. For me, at least. Others might have different experiences.

— What do you feel physically when you write a poem? Do you sense its emergence in a particular part of your body, for example?

— Not in a specific part of my body, but the rhythm, which is important to me in poetry, is something I truly feel physically. How does this happen? I suppose I experience the poem in my body as an internal dance.

— I can’t help but ask about the performative aspect of how you read your poems publicly. You usually do it emotionally, using hand gestures and moving your body. So, does it mean that when you read a poem, you are recreating that bodily internal dance in which you wrote it?

Yes! But until you mentioned it, I never thought about it that way. The term "performative" slightly bothers me, though, because it’s associated with acting for me.

— I might use the word "performative" subjectively, as the difference between it and acting feels intuitive. It’s similar to the difference between "impress" and "make an impression." It’s not that there’s anything wrong with acting; it’s just more interesting to see how a person lives their text rather than how they perform it.

— I mentioned the association with acting because I have a close friend who is an actor and often says to me, "Shuvalova, let me teach you how to read your texts properly. You’re doing it all wrong." And I always reply, "That’s because I’m not performing an actor's reading." The truth is, I can only read my poems in my own, non-theatrical way. When I try to approach it differently, it feels like I’m pretending. After his comments, I tried to figure out what exactly I was doing, but I couldn’t quite put it into words. So, I was really pleased when you mentioned the idea of recreating an internal dance. It’s more about a process of bringing the text to life anew, rather than merely replicating it.

I spent a lot of time working with the poetry of Ted Hughes. He was deeply interested in shamanistic traditions, and many of his poems are written from the perspective of natural forces or beings. But this isn't the same as speaking through invented characters. One of his remarkable poems is titled "Wodwo," which is about a creature whose name (and the poem’s title) is etymologically related to the forest, though it’s an archaic term in English. Prior to Hughes, it seems to have been used only once in English literature – in the medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." In Hughes’s poem, Wodwo represents a forest entity that asks, "What am I?" This voice might seem to come from Hughes himself, but it’s actually a shamanic act. For the creature to speak, the shaman must empty himself and let his voice be used.

What I do when I read my poems is similar to this shamanic invocation. When you’re creating a poem, the text first emerges when I write it, but to make it come alive in a new context, it has to flow through me again. This process is only possible through that internal dance of creation.

—  I used the term "performative" by drawing a parallel with how poetry readings differ between white and non-white authors in the U.S. Not universally or at all times, of course. But often, non-white authors present their work with a lot more expressiveness, using active gestures and interacting with the text and audience in a markedly different way. I realize this is partly due to the cultural backgrounds, but there’s more to it.

— I believe it’s not just a cultural matter but also tied to trauma. Reflecting on my personal experience, as a teenager, I often felt that the people around me (at least the majority) were so different from me that there was almost nothing in common. This was evident in how I wanted to appear, whom I wanted to associate with, and what interested me. When navigating this sense of otherness, which can be quite traumatic, there are generally two broad approaches. One might retreat and try to conform as much as possible. Alternatively, one might choose to be as openly – even provocatively – true to oneself.

— It's like declaring, "I will be exactly who I am."

— Exactly, because it makes it harder for others to impose an identity on you from the outside.

— Following your point about trauma, I’ve just realized that in Europe, colleagues also describe Ukrainian poets' performances as particularly expressive and performative. Even in Poland, the tradition of public poetry readings is quite distinct. It seems that this could be linked to a colonial trauma: a need to assert oneself more forcefully to gain recognition?

— This aligns with what I was beginning to express – in both cases, it’s about a strategy of resistance. Whether on an individual level or within a community that has faced ongoing trauma.

— It seems I'm ready to clarify the difference between performativity and acting. From the performances of non-white authors in the U.S., I've noticed that this kind of demonstrativeness and expressiveness isn't about putting on a show; it's more about emphasizing the significance of what you're discussing and affirming your own importance. It's a statement of your presence.

— Yes, that’s part of it for me. When someone tells you, "You can’t occupy this space," you want to fill it so completely that no one can ignore your presence. This is a strategy I’m quite familiar with. I remember being 14 and feeling a deep fear about wearing a metal band t-shirt covered in hellish imagery, piercing my ears with safety pins, and walking through Kyiv like that. Most people around me looked very different. This fear was not just mental but physical. Taking this step was also a declaration: "Yes, I am different from you, and that’s perfectly fine." It marked the beginning of asserting myself, of insisting that I too have a place in this space and want to inhabit it in a way that reflects who I truly am.

— In this context, I'd also like to ask you about queerness. You are among the few Ukrainian writers who openly express their queer identity in their work. What do culture and society lose by silencing queer identities and pushing them to the margins?

It seems to me that increasing visibility could help reduce the number of unfounded fears and hostility. There’s already a lot of these in Ukrainian society, particularly at the moment. But the reduction of these fears is also blocked by our colonial history. Many of us have an ingrained sense that our community is at risk, and that allowing any form of difference could lead to our disintegration, dilution, or disappearance. This is why otherness—especially queerness—is often seen as a threat. The extent to which our fears govern us and shape our thinking and boundaries is a significant issue in Ukrainian society.

— I also see this as a desire to control others' lives in response to one’s own sense of powerlessness or misunderstanding of their impact on both personal and societal levels. This tendency stems not only from the current war but also from our recent totalitarian past.

— I agree that it’s also about control.

— And moreover, it’s a perverse kind of control.

— Absolutely. This is one of the reasons why, during times of great societal difficulty, it's often minorities who start to face oppression or violence. People want to exert some form of control or influence where they can or where they’re allowed. It’s easiest to direct that control toward the most vulnerable members of society.

So, I believe that one of the effects of having queer voices in the public sphere and a society’s willingness to listen to them would be the recognition that these aren’t monstrous figures hiding in basements and sucking the blood of infants, but rather people from your own community. A neighbor from the apartment across the hall, a coworker, someone you ride the subway with. And these people are completely normal—just like you. The fear of difference is ancient: once, red-haired people were stoned, and today, unfortunately, people with queer identities face similar prejudice.

For me, discussing these issues is important because it represents an experience of honesty. Honesty with family, friends, neighbors, and those closest to us. I’ve been fortunate in that while some street thugs or extremists might have disapproved of my appearance or who I am, my closest circle has never oppressed me. So now, I am very open about this aspect of myself.

— On the other hand, since the full-scale invasion, I’ve noticed more queer literature emerging on our book market. For instance, within the lineup of "Vydavnytstvo." But I’m still unsure how this will be perceived and interpreted.

Yes, I’m currently waiting for Almost Good Guys from them to arrive. This trend genuinely encourages me. The greater the visibility of queer experiences in literature, the less fear there will be of encountering someone different from oneself. Literature, by its nature, expands our understanding of other experiences, helping to foster acceptance. I’m confident that, eventually, a distinct queer literary niche will develop in Ukraine. However, I hope it won't be born out of struggle and hostility, where people are afraid to buy these books, and writers hesitate to publish under their own names.

— After discussing all these complex and significant topics, I’d like to circle back to your book – the collection “endsongs”, released this summer by the Old Lion Publishing House. Could you tell us about the title and what this collection means to you?

— I chose the title endsongs because it carries a dual meaning. On one hand, "finality" speaks to something happening at the end, in a concluding phase. On the other hand, it points to finiteness, to something fleeting and impermanent.

For me, endsongs in that first sense is largely about the experience of loss, which is an integral part of being human. In the collection, I delve into the notion of loss and finitude across different dimensions. One section deals with the personal – the end of a romantic relationship. Another reflects on the passage of time and the inevitability of aging. And then, there are the losses brought on by the war (which, in truth, permeates the entire book and informs much of its tone).

In the context of war, we are living through an apocalyptic moment – the end of the world as we knew it before the invasion, a world we can never return to. Right now, it’s hard to fully accept or process this irreversible shift or to allow ourselves to grieve for the pre-war world: it’s simply not the time for it, and perhaps it’s impossible. This brings me to the second layer of "finality" in the book – the idea that even though the world has been shattered, there is a promise that it will come together again (though it may look entirely different). Losses don't just take things away from us (sometimes the things we value most or what we can't replace), but through that profound pain, they shape us, they define who we are. In the context of war, we are not only losing parts of ourselves and our world, but also (at an unthinkable price) gaining something new: creating a new reality.

I want to emphasize that loss isn't solely about pain – it’s also about discovering who we are. Remember how I talked about peeling back the layers of an onion? In endsongs, I reflect a lot on what it means for a person to lose themselves, on the multiple ways we drift away from our essence, and on how we constantly evolve into someone new. But if you get to the core, to the part of yourself that can’t be stripped away without breaking you completely, that’s where you find your true strength – that’s where you find yourself. So when I write about these things, I’m not only addressing loss but also exploring what remains after the loss, what pain can’t take away, what endures, and what you can hold on to.

Translated from Ukrainian by Anna Petelina