Write Each Word As If It Is Your Last Word
A Conversation with Ukrainian Poet Soldier
Artur Dron [Артур Дронь]
Only twenty-four years old, Lviv native Artur Dron has been called one of the finest Ukrainian poets of the Russo-Ukraine war. Upon the advent of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dron enlisted in the military and joined the 125th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade, which was deployed to both Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. In October 2024, a Russian anti-personnel mine killed two of Dron’s comrades and left him with severe trauma to his left hand and forearm. After a successful nerve transplant surgery, Dron now undergoes physical therapy to restore mobility and sensitivity to his fingers.
Dron wrote his second poetry collection, «Тут були ми» (Old Lion, 2023) while serving on the front line. The book garnered him critical praise and popular renown and was published in many European-language editions. This May, «Тут були ми» was published in English as We Were Here (Jantar, 2025), translated by Dron’s fellow Ukrainian poet Yuliya Musakovska.
“I have to say sorry in advance for my English,” Dron warned me, “I will make a few stupid mistakes, I’m sure.” But he proceeded to speak eloquently about his poetry, the war, and his religious faith.
Our conversation took place at the Coffee Mine in Lviv, Ukraine, on 8 May 2025.
Brent: I should first ask you, how is your health?
Artur: Much better now than a few months ago. I had injuries in my back, in my leg, in my right arm, but the most [serious] of all was in my left [arm]. I lost a part of nerve, I had my bone broken, and I had no feeling in a few fingers. It was a difficult wound. But now I feel much better. I am healing in the rehabilitation center Unbroken. It’s one of our best rehabilitation centers.
Brent: It’s here in Lviv, yes?
Artur: Yes. It’s based in Lviv. So, I’m healing there for five or six months already. And there are very good therapists. I’m very thankful for all of them. So, we are working. I live in my home, but I’m going every day to Unbroken to work with my therapists. And now I can [make] a fist, and I can make my fingers be straight. It was very hard in the first weeks, but now it’s much better.
Brent: I want to congratulate you on the recent English translation of your book «Тут були ми» (We Were Here). Did you personally choose Yuliya Musakovska to translate your book?
Artur: No, but I’m very happy that she [was] the translator. She wrote me in 2023 that there is this idea to publish a book in English. I was very happy [about] this, very happy. And she told me they [didn’t] know yet who would be [the] translator,…they were searching,…[a]nd she told me maybe she will be [the] translator. And I was hoping she [would] because I love Yuliya’s poetry very much, and I’m very thankful to Yuliya for all [the] work she’s done for this book. She was also [the] editor of [the] Swedish edition and [the] translator of [the] English edition. I’m joking sometimes that I made one book, and she made two books.
Brent: Are the two of you friends?
Artur: Yes, and there’s also a very good [editorial] team in Exeter because Yuliya was working with three or four native-English-speaking editors. It’s difficult for [a] Ukrainian writer to translate [a] Ukrainian book into English. It’s much better when [a] native speaker tries to translate in[to] his language. So, it was one of Yuliya’s worries. But there was a very good [editorial] team – Professor Hugh Roberts [of Exeter University, director of the Translating Ukrainian War Poetry project] and his colleagues. I can only imagine what a big work they all [did], and I’m very thankful to them.
Brent: Was there ever a thought that you would translate your own poetry?
Artur: Oh, I haven’t such thoughts. No, I don’t have enough level of some foreign language, including English. So, I think it’s not [a] job for me. I wanted [professionals to do it.] Now I am working on improving my English so [that] one day I will have the possibility to go abroad, for example, to visit London to [give a] presentation in person. It’s my big dream. But to translate my own poetry, it’s too cool for me.
Brent: I would like to hear in your own words your biography as an artist. How do you see yourself having developed since you began writing?
Artur: I have this one precept, one rule – the most important rule in writing – is that you have to write about the most important things for you. These things have changed [over the] years, but the main rule doesn’t. I mean that, when I was seventeen, I was writing student poetry about young people, about love, about living in [a] dormitory, student life, etc. Now I am writing about war, about these terrible things that are happening. But the rule is still that. I always try to write about things that…I must write about. I think I would like to write about more positive things, about different things. But it would be false, it would be not honest…. So, this poetry changed. It became more short; more dark, maybe; more rude. But the main rule is still that I have to write about the most important things for myself. It’s [something] that didn’t change, and I hope that it [doesn’t] change in the future.
Brent: Civilian poets can sit in their study, they can look out the window, they can walk around and look for inspiration, and come back and revise over a period of several days or weeks or months. But how did being in the military affect your creative process? Do you find yourself writing more quickly or writing less often, or how do you find the time to write?
Artur: Yes, in civil[ian] life, we said that every word in poetry [has] a big weight. Now, I think we have to write each word as if it is your last word. It’s not just have a big weight. It could be your last word, your last sentence. So, you have to stay in front of each of your poems with [the] thought that it may be the last words you leave after yourself. In this way, you will write the most honest and powerful things you can. And I think it’s a big influence of [the] war experience – this understanding that it really can be your last word. So, what word [out] of thousands you have to choose in this poem? Especially if it’s a very short poem with, I don’t know, ten words. Each of these words have to be electricity, have to be very powerful. How can you choose [them]? You have to think that it can be your last word.
Brent: Many of the poets I have spoken to – including Tetiana Vlasova, Lyuba Yakimchuk, and Mykola Antoshchak – said that, when the full-scale invasion began, they could not write a single word for several days/weeks/months. As an artist, what effect does trauma or fear have on art? Can fear motivate you to write, or does it suppress you and paralyze you and prevent you from writing?
Artur: I stopped [writing and reading] after the full-scale invasion began. But I can’t say that this fear paralyzed me. I think it was more about [the] powerless[ness] of poetry, of writing. [Ukrainian poet, translator, educator, and literary critic Dr.] Halyna Kruk said in Europe in one of her speech[es] that it was very sad for her that poetry can’t kill. And I think we all had this thought after the full-scale invasion that we [were] sorry that our job of life can’t kill our enemies and can’t protect our loved ones. And after the full-scale invasion began, when children were dying, when there were shellings all over the country, I thought that [poetry] is very powerless, is very senseless, writing, putting words in sentences because it can’t kill, it can’t protect. It can [do] nothing.
But I had to think about it a lot, to think about poetry, to think about literature, to reinvent it for myself and finally understand that there are some things poetry can do for you. For example, it can make you less lonely. It can give you a chance to read about some feelings that you can’t [express]. It can help you to share your experience, experience you don’t understand. It can do many things. But there were a very long way for me to understand it. So, it all began from silence.
Brent: Obviously, the perspective of artists who are serving on the front lines is invaluable, as they can talk about the war first-hand. However, Taras Pastukh, a professor of literature at Ivan Franko National University who has written many articles about contemporary Ukrainian war poetry, told me that there is an expression that “you cannot make soup when you are sitting inside the pot.” What is your own thought on the perspective of the artist? Is there more interest in poetry written by soldiers and those directly involved in the war? Can a person be too close to the war to write about it clearly and effectively?
Artur: It depends on what poetry you are expecting to read. Of course, [a] combatant will [be a] wonderful poet. [A] combatant probably will write a bad poem about civil[ian] life. And [a] genius poet in a civil[ian] city will write a bad poem about war. It all depends on what poem you want to read. If you want to read about this ordinary man in war, in battles, on the front line, underground literally, in this case you have to read poet combatants. Because except them, no one will write about it really honest[ly].
I think it’s [a] very interesting saying about soup. If you want to write about soup, it will be difficult for you when you are inside [the] pot. [But] if you want to write about potato boiling, you have to be inside it. [chuckles]
Brent: I think you’ve already started to cover this when you talked about the weight of words. As an artist, I wonder what you perceive as your influence or your responsibility, particularly now in terms of the war. Do you, as an artist, feel a great responsibility to record the war – accurately, powerfully, importantly – for posterity, for future generations?
Artur: No, I don’t. I think that I feel just one responsibility: to be honest with myself. I don’t feel that I am some [prophet] who [has] to talk about war or [has] to get a light to this dark society or something, it’s my mission, it’s my responsibility. I don’t feel like this. I’m just an ordinary man. I have my work, my job of my life, it’s writing. And I have just one responsibility: to be honest with myself and with my readers. Maybe in a few years I will change my mind. I think it’s normal. But today, I think so. Just one responsibility, just honesty.
Brent: What value have you found in social media in terms of connecting with your readers and with your community of poets?
Artur: Well, it’s a good [opportunity] to talk with people you can’t [meet] in person. For example, in my service on the front line, I had met [through] the internet so many writers, so many war poets, including Yuliya. For me, it was a big opportunity to be [a] part of [the] literature world without [the] possibility to go, for example, in person [to] some literature events. I was writing on the front line. I can’t go [to] some presentations, poetry readings, to promote myself [and] my poems. I just wrote [them] and published [them] on Facebook. And it gave me a big chance to be heard. Other people took my words, took my poems, and read [them]. For example, Yuliya abroad, in Exeter, in London, or in some Ukrainian events, or to put it in some anthology. So, for me, [the] internet and social media [were] this great chance to be heard when I can’t meet people in person, when I can’t meet my readers, can’t visit some literature events. I was just writing and publishing it in social media…. [The] internet [and] social media [were] a great gift for me.
Brent: When the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture and Information Policy opened a website called “Poetry of the Free” and invited ordinary Ukrainians to upload their poetry. As you see, as of today [8 May 2025], over forty thousand poems have been uploaded by Ukrainians.
Artur: Forty thousand!
Brent: These are not poets; these are just ordinary citizens. I’m wondering what you think of this idea that so many ordinary citizens have decided to respond to the war in verse.
Artur: I think it shows us that poetry is something bigger [than] we thought. Sometimes these poems shouldn’t be very professional, shouldn’t be written by a professional writer with many books. Sometimes, they are things that their creators need. Many of these people, maybe even most of them, wrote these texts when they felt pain, when it was hard for them. And they just were taking their experience, their emotions, their pain and making a poem of it. And it [isn’t at an] important, professional level, these poems. This process made them powerful, I think.
Brent: Do you see poetry as not just simply art, but also as therapy?
Artur: Exactly, yes. That’s what I’m saying. Yes, some kind of therapy. I didn’t think [that] when I was younger. It was something weird for me when people were saying writing is therapy, that you can make yourself better when you are writing. It was weird for me to hear, but now I totally agree that it is therapy for the writer. It can be therapy for readers and listeners. Poetry readers are some kind of group therapy, I think. So, yes, yes, it’s not just an art. And this is the main example.
Brent: Do you see poetry working as group therapy in social media?
Artur: I think so. But we have many, many poems written during the full-scale invasion. Some of them are very good and strong and honest and wonderful, even if they are not on a very high professional level. But very often, we can find in social media—I don’t know how to say it in English, I have to find it maybe and translate this word—spectacle. It’s when people are writing about pain just for writing about pain, just to get more likes. It’s [a] really big problem on social media because you can write [a] very stupid poem not about yourself, about something you read somewhere, but you can write a very sad story about children dying, about pain to get more likes, to get more comments, to get [people] to think you are a wonderful writer. This is the wrong way. This is a very unhealthy way, I think. And, unfortunately, we have a lot of it on social media. But there is one good thing in this situation. In such horrible times, it’s more simple for you to understand what is true poetry and what isn’t. This false [poetry] is very easy for you to see, I think. So, I’m not worrying about it because this poetry will never be the main literature of these times. How many likes it will get isn’t important because it’s not honest, it’s speculation.
Brent: You don’t think it will endure.
Artur: Yes. People are smarter than we think, especially when it goes against our feelings in such hard times. People are smarter. True poetry speaks not in just this visible language but in some invisible language of emotions. It’s very hard to make it – um, штучно [artificial]. Um, [searching for another way to say what he means] it’s very hard to make someone a fool.
Brent: I’ve read a lot of Ukrainian war poetry now, and it strikes me that there is very little mention of God, religion, or spiritual faith. It seems almost purposely absent, as if faith in God has been abandoned due to the horrors of war. But you do address these topics in your poems. Can you talk a little bit about why you choose to discuss faith in your poetry?
Artur: This question about faith and God is one of the most difficult in wartime. In every war, we ask ourselves [how] God can just look at it. We feel abandoned. I understand why people, for example, became atheists during the war. People [who] lost their faith in God. It’s a very big problem. It’s very sad. It’s so [human], so understandable. But, fortunately or unfortunately, I kept my faith.
I think that it’s the wrong question when we ask why God let this war happen. Because God doesn’t play with us like with LEGO. He doesn’t make every decision for us. He gave us the most powerful and the scariest thing you can ever imagine: your possibility to choose.
Brent: Free will.
Artur: Free will, yes. It’s a basic Christian catechesis, this free will. Everything [is] turning around free will. [It was] not God entering, for example, in Kharkiv on the tank killing civilian Ukrainians. It was some Russian soldier to sit in this tank, to go to another country, to put the thing on the tank, and to kill someone. It wasn’t God. It was this man. It’s hard for us to understand because when we talk about God [being] almighty, it’s hard to understand why he didn’t stop this war in one second. And it’s an open question for me. I think I have to ask Him one day.
But I believe this Christian God in these horrible times when we’re asking where He is, He is with people [who] are feeling the most pain, with the most [scared] one, with the most wounded one, with us. He is with every soldier in [the] trenches, with every widow, with every abandoned child, with every wounded soldier without hand or leg. He is with these [scared] people in the subway in the sirens in the city. I don’t know. It’s [a] very difficult question. All I can say is that I felt this God, I saw this God, and He was with us. And for me it is [without a doubt]. I have many uncomfortable questions as an ordinary, little smart human. I have many difficult questions for Him. But it is [without a doubt] that He is present with us. And the more difficult conditions you have, the [simpler] for you to see Him, I think. It’s hard to see God when everything is fine because we are thinking about different things. But when everything is bad, when you are [scared], it’s easier. It’s a very difficult question, especially for me to talk in English.
Brent: I think you spoke well.
Artur: Yeah. [chuckles] It’s hard to make my thoughts clear, but the main thing is that He is present with the most [scared], the most abandoned, the ones [most in pain].
Brent: When the war is over, what do you perceive your role will be in society?
Artur: I don’t want to even think about my place in society. I am so tired of this war, of this military service, of these days without my family [and] loved ones that when I think about my retiring or about our victory and my way home, I think I want to be with my family. I’m thinking about my place in my family. I am engaged now.
Brent: Congratulations.
Artur: [chuckles] Thank you. I want to build my own family, I’m working on it. I want to be a husband, I want to be a son, I want to be a brother, I want to be a writer. I just want a quiet, simple life with my loved ones. I don’t care [about] my place in society for now. Maybe in a few years, maybe when I will rest better, I will want to change Ukraine, to make something big. But now, I [am] just very tired, and I want to spend time with my family. And I think they deserve it. I think I will [go] back to my work in the Old Lion publishing house, and I will write. I want to be a writer, to write. I have many ideas for future books. So, I just want to be with my family, be with my comrades, with my friends, and to work and to write. It’s all I want.
Brent: What would you want Americans – particularly young American university students like mine – to know about Ukraine right now?
Artur: I think the main thing is this understanding that when you are helping Ukrainians, you are also helping yourself. Ukrainians are not just protecting our country. Ukrainians are protecting all the civilized world, including America. I know that it’s hard to understand, to imagine because we have this ocean between us. We are very far from each other. But still, it’s such an existential war. It’s like Lord of the Rings: it’s just a war of darkness and light. And if Americans are on the side of light, they have to understand that helping Ukrainians is helping themselves.
If we will lose this war, the next war will [be] in NATO countries, [and] the next war can be in the United States. I have one poem [in which] I write [that] Europe is very lucky to be behind our backs. So, I think that Americans and Europeans are very lucky people to be behind our backs because we are dying, we are fighting. It’s very hard, it’s very scary. But we have no other choice. And we are very thankful for all [the] support, and we are more thankful for this understanding that it’s not just [a] Russian-Ukrainian war. It’s a Russian war against all the rest [of the] world….
The main thing not just for Americans but our friends in different countries is understanding that you have to help Ukrainians because it’s right. It’s for yourself, it’s for your families, it’s for families’ security. It’s some guarantee that your children will not be soldiers in thirty years in [the] next wars. So, it’s not for us. It’s for Americans, for Germans, for Britons, for all civilized people.
Brent: One of my friends in Lviv is an ethnographer with two sons, ages twelve and nine. Another friend is a twenty-three-year-old with a younger brother who is, I believe, fourteen. I look at these boys, and I think if this war continues, what will their future be? For me, now that I have gotten to meet Ukrainians, it becomes something personal and frightening.
Artur: You know, before our meeting, today in Lviv started a military writers’ forum. And we have [a] meeting in one of Lviv’s schools: me, two other military writers, and, I think, eighth graders. We were talking about books, about writing, about war, and their teacher said that in a few years, they will think about these years and will understand that they were children of war. And I said that it is this [a] better variant because the main thing is for them to be just children of war, not to [become] soldiers one day.
There is a writer even younger than me – he is twenty-one – and we both have memories [of] when we were fourteen years old [schoolkids], and we were writing letters [and] postcards to our soldiers on the front line. A few years later, we became soldiers in this war, and we are reading letters from other children. For us, it’s [a] very real danger.
Brent: Do you have memories of 2013-2014, the period of Euromaidan, the Revolution of Dignity, and Russia’s seizure of Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk?
Artur: Yeah! Yes, sure. And it’s very scary. For example, I have a cousin who is now seventeen. When he was fifteen, I was already on the front line. And I was thinking, “When I was fifteen our uncle [was] a soldier, and I was a [student]. And now that I am a soldier, he is fifteen years old. And maybe in five years if we will not win this war, he [will] be the soldier. It’s very scary, it’s so scary.
Brent: Who are some of the influences on your poetry? Are there other poets or other artists who have inspired your work?
Artur: I think it’s more the ordinary people I [have] met. It’s very inspiring to meet someone who one day says something you heard and you understood this is literature…. And this great opportunity writing gives you to hear it, to write it down, and to use it someday in some texts. I like to say that, for me, one of the most important things I love in writing is writing is a good opportunity to tell about someone. I’m very happy I have this opportunity to write about someone because some of these ordinary people can’t write something, or don’t want to, or it’s hard for them to make from their thoughts some clear sentences. But the most inspiring thing is to see these people, to look at them, to talk with them, to hear something genius, [and] then write about them. It’s very inspiring. It’s better than poets and books.
[Poet, literary critic, and soldier] Ihor Mitrov—I will meet him after our meeting. He’s in Lviv today, and he has this poem, something like, “My comrade doesn’t read Serhiy Zhadan,” and one of his comrades asked him, “Write about us. Write a book about us.” And Ihor Mitrov writes, “I look at you, and I think you just don’t know how many books are written about you and how many books will be about you.” It’s a wonderful thing. I think it’s a very big blessing to understand it and to hear something you can make a text [from].
Brent: Does your fiancée write?
Artur: No, she has a real job. [chuckles] She’s not an artist. But, actually, she’s [a] very good English speaker. She has work in an international financial company, so she often works with foreign people. She helps me to improve my English. She doesn’t write, but she’s a very big support for me.
Brent: Does anyone one else in your family write or has created art?
Artur: No one.
Brent: So where does this come from?
Artur: [chuckles] I don’t know. No, no one.
Brent: Do you remember the first thing you wrote or how old you were when you wrote it?
Artur: I know it was something about God. I was a young schoolboy, and I wrote something about God. And then, I think, in 2014, 2015, I was in high school, and I was writing something about Maidan, about our Revolution of Dignity – some patriotic poetry. And when I started to study in university, I didn’t write poems. But I visited literature events. I saw this young [man] reading his poems and all these girls looking at [him], and I thought, “Oh my God, maybe it’s such a wonderful thing to be [a] poet.” And then at the end of my first course in university, I started to write poems, and [since] those times, I’m writing regular[ly]. So, I think of myself as a poet [since I was] seventeen years, [during] first grade of university. And everything started from God.
Brent: Do you think you’d like to spend the rest of your life in Lviv?
Artur: I think so. I think that it is the best city for me. For example, when someone asked me, “You weren’t in the most beautiful cities in the world, so how can [you] say Lviv is the best?” And I answer, “You shouldn’t try every woman on the earth to decide who will be your wife.” [chuckles] Yes, it’s [a] similar thing. I think it’s the most comfortable city for me. But I want so much to visit different countries, to go abroad, to visit Spain, USA, Britain. It’s my big, big dream.
Artur Dron (Артур Дронь) grew up in Lviv, Ukraine, and studied journalism at Ivan Franko National University. His first book of poetry, «Гуртожиток №6» (Dormitory No. 6) appeared when he was only nineteen years old. Dron served in the 125th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade, which was deployed to both Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. Written while serving on the front lines, Dron’s second poetry collection, «Тут були ми» (We Were Here, 2023), earned popular and critical praise and was reprinted in multiple languages. A severe battle injury removed him from active duty in October 2024, and Dron officially ended his military service in July 2025. Dron’s latest poetry collection, «Хемінгуей нічого не знає» (Hemingway Knows Nothing) was published in October 2025.
Brent Shannon is a scholar of literature with thirty years of experience in higher education, most recently as an associate professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860-1914 (Ohio UP, 2006) and has published extensively on British Victorian literature, masculinity, and material culture. In 2023, he began exploring Ukrainian poetry written in response to the full-scale invasion, and he has interviewed over fifty Ukrainian poets, publishers, academics, and military members. Brent currently teaches and writes live in Liverpool, United Kingdom, where he lives with his wife.