LONDON (Bywire News) - On June 25, 2022, writers from Ukraine will share their stories and the harrowing experiences they faced — and still are facing — during the brutal war that the Russian Federation is waging in Ukraine. They will perform via Zoom at a reading Write From The Gut: Kyiv Method Writers, hosted by SF Creative Writing Institute and Method Writing.
The founder of the institute, Alexandra Kostoulas, has been teaching the Writing Method for over ten years in San Francisco. Other faculty members, authors and professors from Harvard, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and other well-known schools, are known for their community-oriented work. A poet herself, Alexandra Kostoulas dedicated a lot of time and energy to hosting poetry readings and literary events throughout her writing career — but this one is really special.
When one of her colleagues, Natalie Skorykova, had to flee Ukraine after the Russian Federation started a full-scale war on February 24, 2022, Alexandra reached out to see if the Institute could help. What she found out shook her to the core. Natalie’s students log in on Zoom from the front lines just to be with the class. One aspiring writer was killed in the war. He never finished his book. Other writers are now refugees scattered across the world. Natalie often goes late into the night until all of her students get a chance to read their work.
“During the two and a half years of teaching the Method in Kyiv, not only I had [to deal] with all the nuances of a startup but also tried to survive in during the pandemic — and now war,” wrote Natalie. “I am grateful to Alexandra not only for this experience but also for her example. A real example of what can be done differently, what is needed differently.” Alexandra has been deeply moved by the suffering of the Ukrainian people at the hands of the Russian invaders throughout this war.
“The interview with the young Mariupol woman named Anastasia, who hunkered down in her apartment with her two-year-old inspired a poem,” said Alexandra, a mother of two young children. “In this poem, I was trying to recreate the Orthodox lamentations of Christ, sung in the church, in three tones, on Holy Friday at night. And then they say, “Kali Anastasi!” (Happy Resurrection.) It’s very symbolic. All the people in the church in the Greek Orthodox religion leave through, a contraption made of flowers, a symbol of Christ’s tomb. They pick it up, carry it around the church, light candles, go out and come back under it. I was influenced by that. I’m not super religious but I am Greek.”
Poetry comes from chants and prayer. Writers, like shamans, bring healing at the time of extreme suffering. The literary community is alive in Ukraine and art thrives—to the accompaniment of air sirens and explosions. Writers and artists around the world join the creative power to support this remarkable demonstration of the spirit.
Between Two Walls
on Orthodox Good Friday
— For Anastasiya In the springtime
In the springtim
of another time
in another place
we welcome the daylight
and little shocks of green
growing amid sadness
on the one side
of the world
people are
going back to normal
after two years
of being inside
on the other side,
people are melting
snow once to drink,
again to shower,
a third time to flush the toilet
they will bring their babies
to the hallway
during bombardments
keeping them safe
is a matter of
hiding between two walls
chasing paper airplanes, making it a game
at the same time,
I am cleaning toxic mold
out of my life and apartment
after being inside
in between these walls
for two years
hunkering down from
covid and the fires
with a two-year-old and a newborn
now a two and four-year-old.
I feel sick for the first time
since the reopening
I can feel
the tension.
I sit on the grass
as my 2-year-old
sleeps in the stroller
in golden gate park
and drop down
my pen hits the page
we slight poets gather
sit together three of us
in a row
together a bony
resistance
we slight poets will try to sing from
whatever sliver of waxing crescent hope
we can lay beneath our fingers
from now to eternity these
shiny moons
of existence
as long as I am alive
I will sing into the
turns
I will start acting like a poet
So today is the day of death
tonight we say Kali Anastasi
Good Resurrection
and we wait for tomorrow
at midnight
for the light to shine in the darkness
in the last few years
we’ve all been beaten
down by life a bit
but somehow we emerge
truthful resilient
drowned by grief
like our fathers,
or the trauma
of our mothers
No matter how long you oppress
— evil one —
you cannot
kill them
they will find a way to live
as Anastasiia has
to fly airplanes with her two-year-old
along the corridor between the safety of two walls
on Good Friday
as the comfortable morn and wait for resurrection
come to the church in heels and furs
kiss the icons
the holy one
is a Syrian refugee
gone mad
at the gas station by my house
beating the drum
the holy ones
are a mother and child in Ukraine
whose story almost went
untold
hunkering down
Resurrection
is hiding in the safety of two walls
with her two-year-old
chasing toy airplanes
sending her husband out for food
making shadow puppet theatre
in the rest between two bombs
I watch on from my country
that only understands simple things
good or evil
black or white
night and day
World War 1
and World War 2.
the truth is a little more obscure.
So let me explain:
we will divide up our losses and our wins
we will sing in fall out harmony
we will sing in the language of thought
we will sing for oppressed victim,
for the refugee, for the orphaned children
found in the street by a lady soldier who cleans their wounds
you will sing for the white man who gores the Black man
for a parking place with an iron pole and gets away with it.
I will sing for the Yazidi children
who came up to me on the road smiling in 2016.
You will sing for the one who kills another for food
for the one who slaughter and rapes the innocents
here, you sing here, and here
and I’ll sing there and there.
Lamentations for the dead
for the living
for
oppressor and oppressed
black and white
occupier and occupied
we will find a light in the
darkness
The world, the sudden vapors
the oracle only sees so far
my stomach is sick with the future
my palette tastes of ash
of a utopia long burned down
in Golgotha
mentally weak will always murder
the mentally strong
maggots falling out of the mouth of truth
the brainwashed say when interviewed:
they’re killing each other,
they put those bodies there,
they’re killing themselves they say
they’re faking it like they faked the Holocaust
its not that bad, it’s just a territory, a military exercise
a slight occupation, not a war,
he darts his eyes from side to side in their own war,
*
If you’re going to rape a woman, dear, while at war, the Russian
bride is intercepted as saying,
at least wear protection
How do these people celebrate their Easters?
Do they wear the stolen crosses of the Ukrainian women
while they pray?
or the ring of a dead Black man
who they killed for being the wrong color
too close to their driveway
and get away with it
do they dye their eggs on the proper day
do they know all the right songs?
evil is polite when it wants to be
evil is always hiding in the cracks of the shadow
evil is in the hearts of the smoldering eyes of the haters
evil pretends to be strong, to offer a momentary protection
evil feeds off your terror and relishes in it
They live like there’s no tomorrow, these people.
But do they have 2-year-olds who fly paper airplanes
in between two walls?
How do they dare watch what is going on
How do they not go mad
How do they wait for the end of the world
Are they charmed by tinkling bells
at the country club
do they make love to their wives
their mistresses in the dark
taking all the sundries for themselves
and leaving everyone else to starve
these people will dance on our graves if we let them
they will wear our stolen jewelry like animal skins
they will run away to unknown lands
They will steal our children
and teach them to hate us
to hate themselves
to forget their own names
they have eaten the great lie like arsenic
in their teacakes.
and they will only realize when its two late
and they’re paralyzed
in death
eternally still
unable to move.
*
and we slight poets
we will sing until
we run out of breath
we will sing until we
find each other
in the dark
we will sing until
we
burrow out a hollow in the bones
discarded around the streets
we will sing
until we find a place to hide in
we will sing
until we have sung to the end of breath
So much living
between
those two walls
there is a galaxy
between those two walls
like a galaxy
between two stars
because Resurrection and her two-year-old
live on
and
today
is a new day
and today
through
an ember
the
light
shines
on
in
the
darkness.
Amen.
— —
Poetry comes from chants and prayer. Writers, like shamans, bring healing at the time of extreme suffering. The literary community is alive in Ukraine and art thrives—to the accompaniment of air sirens and explosions. Writers and artists around the world join the creative power to support this remarkable demonstration of the spirit.
(Writing by Zarina Zabrisky)