Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2022: A Photograph from Irpen July 2022

The mid-summer heat scratches the day 
like a number in a lottery ticket. If tomorrow arrives 
(& without a blast), it is a good fortune. 
 
Seven people, cooling off 
in the gunmetal-grey water, share laughter. 
 
Over them, 
on the other side of the riverbank: the blackened bones 
of a multistorey housing hit by enemy missiles. 
 
The slender girls in petite bikinis; the men 
smirking as men do. Flirting like what the hell – 
 
every day is the last day. 

Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2022 Winners

Poetry Archive Now! was established in 2020 to enable us to gather recordings from a much wider pool of talented poets from the UK and ...

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Lena Zycinsky

Artist and poet. Born in Minsk, I lived in the UK, the USA, and Greece. I was in Belarus during the pandemic, until its political crisis of 2020 forced my family to flee. I am an author of three books in Russian and have had three solo exhibitions. I’m currently working on finalising my first collection of poems in English.

A special thank you to our WordView 2021 poets.

Chair of the Judging Panel, Joelle Taylor, says: "We were thrilled by the range and scope of the poetry and techniques explored throughout the wide submissions. I have said before that to write a poem is an act of resistance but to then perform it as well is a revolution. It takes a bravery to face the page, and a further one to stand by your words. While we’ve all become more used to filming ourselves over the pandemic, all of us were deeply aware of that courage.

Often when on a judging panel we find ourselves faced with impossible decisions. If you can imagine, after sifting, it’s as though a hundred people have crossed the finish line at precisely the same moment but there are only three medals. How do we come to these decisions? Through the objective unpicking of the poems, through our individual passions, through a consideration of narratives, especially those lesser heard. We come to it through uneasy negotiation and through heart, and above all through our shared love and understanding of the possibilities of poetry.

Our honest applause goes to all who submitted, and I hope you can hear it.

Congratulations to those we selected. We hope to see you all again soon."

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