Research project Resurrecting through Language: Linguistic Conversion in Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry

The purpose of my project is to contribute to a broader understanding of the linguistic and cultural repositioning in contemporary Ukraine, particularly in the context of Russia’s war. By focusing on poetry, I show how questions of language and belonging are portrayed and negotiated on a subjective level, demonstrating how poetry can function as an identity-forming medium in Ukrainian society.

Since the outbreak of Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014, a considerable number of Russophone Ukrainian poets have switched from writing in Russian to Ukrainian. More than indicating a personal stance, this linguistic shift has itself emerged as a prominent theme in contemporary poetry. A renowned example of this literary trend is the poet Iya Kiva (b. 1984), who gave up what she described as a “hybrid identity” in favour of primarily writing in Ukrainian following the outbreak of war in her native Donbas. This transition is reflected in her poetry collections Podalsje ot raja (2018), Persha storinka zymy (2019) and Smikh zhasloi vatry (2023), where her bilingual, predominantly Russian-language debut is followed by collections written almost entirely in Ukrainian. Kiva’s poetry is permeated with metalinguistic explorations of language, memory and identity, as well as their intimate interconnectedness. In Kiva’s poetics, much like in contemporary Ukrainian poetry more broadly, the choice of Ukrainian therefore represents a profound act of self-redefinition, with language serving as both a means and an end. Given the existential weight of language in her poetry, my project adopts the term linguistic conversion as a conceptual model for interpreting this process.