'Because We Aren’t Powerless'

A reading for Ukraine reminds us that the survival of poetry is nothing less than the survival of the human soul.

Lychakiv Cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, also known as the City of Lions. (iStock: Yavuz Sariyildiz)

By Michael Judge

Living and working in Iowa City, Iowa, home to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the International Writing Program (IWP), I’ve attended many readings—so many I can’t count. But yesterday I attended a reading I will never forget, and one that will haunt and inspire me until there is nothing left to haunt and inspire. It was a Reading for Ukraine, organized by my friend Christopher Merrill, director of the IWP, and the Ukrainian-American writer Askold Melnyczuk. Participating readers included Marilynne Robinson, Bob Shacochis, Elizabeth Willis, Jane Hirshfield, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Pavlo Korobchuk, Joyelle McSweeney, Kateryna Babkina, Halyna Kruk, Peter Balakian, Victoria Amelina, Kateryna Mikhalitsyna, Olena Huseinova, Yuliya Musakovska, Nina Murray, and more. In this strangely distant, intimate and brutal age, it was both a live and a Zoom event: Many of the readers were in Ukrain…