Spring Semester 2022: Poetry at the Outbreak of War

As the train pulled into Waterloo Station, I got a text from Emily.

I’m in Foyles.

It was 6:30pm, February 24th 2022, a Thursday. That morning Russia had launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine. There had been plenty of intelligence throughout the preceding months to indicate that this would happen, but a part of me had still believed that it was posturing on Russia’s part. It shocked me that the Kremlin hadn’t even bothered to try and justify their actions to the global community. This was a war of naked imperialism. That afternoon I’d spent hours watching the live coverage on the BBC before finally feeling too sick to go on any longer.

I closed the tab on my computer and my own life returned to me. It now seemed so trivial, but it was here in front of me, and the war was not. I tried to go about the rest of my day as usual, but the war lingered in the back of my mind, resurfacing every few minutes to twist my gut in a bout of nausea. Life doesn’t wait. I thought about that. In a myriad of places, it was someone’s birthday, someone’s wedding day, someone’s best day ever. I thought about them checking the news and feeling that twist of nausea in the context of their own private happiness.

It was our privilege that we could forget about the war for a few minutes as the present…