Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, women have played an increasingly important role in the Ukrainian armed forces. As drone operators, battalion commanders, combat medics, translators, and coordinators, women have steadily redefined not only Ukrainian society but also the Ukrainian military. More and more of those women, too, have turned to literature as a means of sharing their grief, their testimonies, and their determination to ensure that Ukraine remains a free, sovereign European nation. 

Poet and paramedic Yaryna Chornohuz is among them. In 2019 she volunteered as a paramedic, and in 2022 she began taking part in fierce battles against Russian forces. Chornohuz not only serves as a drone pilot, but she also stands as one of Ukraine’s most celebrated poets and one of its fiercest activists and advocates. Her collection [dasein: in defence of presence], translated by Amelia Glaser (Jantar, 2025), is part personal testament, part philosophical abstraction about the ferocity of human will in the face of brutal, genocidal tyranny.

[dasein] is part personal testament, part philosophical abstraction about the ferocity of human will in the face of brutal, genocidal tyranny.

Chornohuz’s poems brim with the desire for freedom and the immediacy and recognition of constant grief. In the poem “[square brackets],” the speaker declares: “I want to sing, while I can, / of freedom, / which, it seems, / amid so many years / of combat, / has been displaced.” This declaration embodies the spirit and the attitude that shaped the war’s initial days, which saw an outpouring of Ukrainian pride and patriotism across the globe. It also captures Ukrainians’ centuries-long battle for identity and sovereignty. 

“[a bullet always finds its mark]” opens with the speaker’s begging question, “why him?” In this simple question, death’s unpredictability, uncertainty, and imminence culminates. The speaker continues:

a bullet always
finds its mark
why not that mark, or that mark
why you?

The speaker’s reliance on the pronoun “you” rather than the pronoun “him” reshapes the poem’s emotion and tone. While “why you?” echoes the opening question, “why him?” and the shift from “him” to “you” personifies the loss and the grief. Brevity, too, works in the line’s favor, since the line’s simplicity compresses both emotional states. 

Nature plays an integral, fundamental role in Chornohuz’s poems—just as it does in Ukrainian culture. “[wind from the steppe]” is one of the paramount examples of the poet’s incorporation of nature and landscapes to symbolize Ukraine and the Ukrainian people. First, it utilizes a core historical landscape—the steppe—associated with Ukrainian culture, identity, Ukrainian freedom, and Ukraine’s resilience. The third stanza, which acts as the poem’s center, is the poem’s most powerful representation of these elements:

no matter how far I run into the woods
no matter how deep the running cuts
my breath
you keep lifting me on your back
so I can rest a little and not get left behind
like wind from the steppe.

Again, Chornohuz relies on the second-person point of view in order to make the poem more intimate and, in this poem’s case, romantic. Hints of Ukraine’s pagan history within the poem emphasize the cultural, even spiritual, importance of nature:

and when you pray to your gods
you’re like wind from the steppe
and when your grasses meet me with their touch
I know there’s no escape except
to heal through pain.

Thus, nature becomes a healing, steadying force within Chornohuz’s work, and, in some ways, these allusions to environment and landscape subtly address the ecocide of Ukraine’s fragile, biodiverse landscape.

Chornohuz’s allusions to environment and landscape subtly address the ecocide of Ukraine’s fragile, biodiverse landscape.

“[the dead are not . . .]” plays with the folk-belief concept that one’s ancestors serve as guardians and protectors. The speaker asserts, “the dead are not in the other world // they’re here, fighting behind the living.” The dead take on a more substantial mythical role when the speaker describes their warrior-like ferocity:

with one blow they’ll kill ten enemies
on a cigarette break between shellings
they whisper to the living
we’ve already been through death
and look, we’re still down in the trenches
you just have to know how to see us
but maybe not all of you can.

The lack of capitalization creates a strange, surreal fluidity and sense of continuity. More so, it also establishes the sense of an in-between world where the dead reside, a world that very few of the living can access. By creating this space, Chornohuz not only honors the dead; she also honors the multitude of Ukrainian beliefs and traditions centered on honoring the deceased as well as the spirits who may or may not exist. 

[dasein: in defence of presence] is a poetic preservation of life, freedom, culture, and tradition. Its very existence is a testimony to Ukraine’s poetic legacy and poetic tradition. Chornohuz’s verses follow in the verse-steps of Shevchenko and Stus but firmly cements a new path for Ukraine’s multitude of female warrior-poets.

Southern New Hampshire University