A remarkable event took place at Scotland’s StAnza international festival when one Ukrainian poet appeared on video link from Kyiv and another actually appeared in person at the festival in St Andrews, after managing to make her way to and across the Polish border, and then succeed in negotiating Priti Patel’s entry controls to the UK.

Olena Huseinova, poet and radio presenter, pictured, appeared on screen from Kyiv at the festival, for the event Translation in Focus: Beyond Any Curtain. It was a moving moment to see her and hear her speak. The event, conceived before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, naturally focused on the four Ukrainian poets taking part in the project – Huseinova, Myroslav Yaiuk, who was away serving with his country’s defence forces, Les Beley, who was helping refugee efforts, and Lyuba Yakimchuk, who had actually managed to make her way to the festival, crossing the border from Ukraine into Poland on the way. 

At the event we heard their poems in Ukrainian and then in English – or, in one case, in Shetlandic.

Olena Huseinova, who works night shifts on Ukraine radio, told her audience: “I am here in Kyiv … I am broadcasting for Ukraine people who are resisting now.”

She added: “This Russian war didn’t start on 24 February this year … it didn’t start in 2014 … we have had 100 years of this war.”   

She read an additional poem, about an old cobbled road that was torn up and replaced with shoddy tarmac by the Russians in the 1990s: “I know about your military trucks … I studied them as a child.”  

A line from a poem by Lyuba Yakimchuk, pictured right, who read it in person after travelling from Ukraine to appear at the festival, said: “I don’t do politics, I hate the way they breathe.” She was in St Andrews for a couple of days, and due to give her own reading later the same day.   

A poem by Les Beley, ‘Living Like Soldiers’, included this line: “Lead soldiers can always be melted down to make new ones, but not these ones.”

A few days before the festival organisers had issued this statement: “In the current context, to speak of poetry, let alone to think of hosting a celebration of poetry, might seem trivial, or beside the point. Yet StAnza … strongly believes that words are never trivial, and that poetry can play a crucial role in helping us to respond to events such as those unfolding at present in Ukraine, and indeed in its own right to effect change.

“This week, our thoughts have very much been with our friends in Kyiv. Over the past year, StAnza and four Scottish poets (Hannah Lavery, Vicki Husband, Andrew Blair and Roseanne Watt) have collaborated with four poets in Ukraine (Les Beley, Lyuba Yakimchuk, Myroslav Yaiuk and Olena Hoseinova), and our partner festival Book Arsenal Kyiv, in a translation project called Beyond Any Curtain, which will feature both online and live at StAnza 2022.

“Obviously, the format of this event remains in flux, since the live appearance of the Ukrainian poets, let alone a zoom appearance, must remain incredibly unlikely at this point in time.”

In the event two of the four Ukrainian poets were able to take part – one via video from Kyiv, and one in person after travelling from Ukraine. Two remarkable examples of courage and tenacity.