Charlotte Higgins

Being driven by a friend, got stuff out.

Then they graduated onto a Mercedes Sprinter, which was... Extraordinary.

A van, which was smashed by a Shahad drone in Nikopol, I believe.

Wow.

God, they really are everyday heroes.

They are.

They are.

I don't use the word heroic lightly, but I do think what they did was kind of heroic.

I think, and whether this is conscious or unconscious in Ukraine, I think there is an urge to create against the destruction.

So many things are being rendered non-existent and so many people are being rendered non-existent.

When I first went in 2022, the beginning of the war had, for many people, stopped them in their tracks in terms of their creativity for really super obvious reasons, like staying alive and making sure your loved ones were alive, possibly volunteering for the army or doing humanitarian work.

All of these were much more pressing than getting your watercolour set out.

But actually, quite quickly, writers and artists started

felt this urge to create documentary of one sort or another.

So there were lots of diaries, there were lots of essay writing, particularly for foreign publishers and foreign press to try and get the story out there, but from Ukrainian subjectivity, super important stories.

Then came poetry, actually.

So poetry is a form that can happen quite quickly.

You can write a poem in a trench, as was proved in the First World War and is being demonstrated over and over again now.

I mean, there are extraordinary poets who are writing from the front lines.

And poetry in 2022 felt like the form because everyone's existence had felt like they had disintegrated, exploded.