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Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but Vladimir Putin\u2019s forces have been nibbling at the edges of the country since 2014. Or one could say that the war began \u201clong before 2014 by way of colonial imperial politics, suppression of language cultures, mass hunger, and terror,\u201d as the poets Carolyn Forch\xe9 and Ilya Kaminsky write in the introduction to In the Hour of War, their new anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry. \u201cThis is a poetry marked by a radical confrontation with the evil of genocide,\u201d they write. \u201cDoes poetry have the tensile strength to embody such a confrontation?\u201d The anthology seeks to answer that question with the help of its diverse contributors: \u201csoldier poets, rock-star poets, poets who write in more than one language, poets whose hometowns have been bombed and who have escaped to the West, poets who stayed in their hometowns despite bombardments, poets who have spoken to parliaments and on TV, poets who refused to give interviews, poets who said that metaphors don\u2019t work in wartime and poets whose metaphors startle.\u201d Forch\xe9 joins us this week on the podcast to talk about the surprising \u201clife-giving force of these poems.\u201d

Go beyond the episode:

• In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine, edited by Carolyn Forch\xe9 and Ilya Kaminsky
• Listen to Serhiy Zhadan\u2019s \u201cTake Only What Is Most Important\u201d on our Read Me a Poem podcast
• Read Megan Buskey\u2019s essay on the long, unfortunate history of Ukrainian displacement

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.

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