Poets don’t often talk about how they first found poetry.

Like me, they might say that they began writing poems at university during an English degree. If they say that, they are likely lying. The poets I have come to know intimately, the poets who I call my friends, all began writing in adolescence or earlier, though they won’t admit it.

Where does the urge to conceal our origins come from? Why do poets, generalised for their embarrassing openness, hide what drives them to become poets?

This morning, I re-watched a 1988 TV appearance from Björk in which she explained that she was once afraid of televisions because a poet told her that they have the ability to control minds. She concluded that the poet had lied, and was relieved to share with the audience that she is no longer afraid of televisions.

I return to this clip regularly. While I don’t disagree with the poet, I think Björk is right to doubt him, and to encourage her audience to doubt poets, too.

Poetry is often conflated with truth. But every poet knows that their work is constructed through literary devices, that it will always respond to a literary tradition before them. Poetry is not a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, as Wordsworth would have it. We do not wander lonely as clouds (that goes for Wordsworth too, who would show up on his sister Dorothy’s doorstep to plagiarise her diaries for his work).

Perhaps the poet’s awareness of this façade is what causes them to avoid admitting their truths? The myth of poetry, then, is in direct conflict with poets themselves.

When I began writing my debut collection Food for the Dead, it was with an awareness of this myth and a need to write against it. The poems largely focus on my Ukrainian heritage and try to give way to various possibilities of what a ‘Ukrainian identity’ might look like.

In the current climate, Ukrainians are considered in relation to war rather than any other aspect of their culture or history. I wanted to write a book against that, a book that, yes, encompasses Ukrainian suffering but also embraces joy, strength, and a grief which at times feels never-ending. It felt urgent to give those sentiments a place to exist. This meant that I had to give access to a part of myself, that ‘true self’, to the page, removing elements of performativity that I’ve previously relied on in my writing.

It meant thinking deeply and constantly about my family, my childhood, and my memories of a country which no longer exists in the same form. It was gruelling and, at points, felt more harmful than helpful to me. Emily Berry wrote a brilliant essay titled Further Injury which argues against the idea of poetry as ‘lifesaving’. In it, she wonders whether her life would improve if she gave up writing poems. I think this is a question many poets consider, but we don’t talk about it because that would betray the myth of poetry.

I wondered about giving up too. But because I’m a poet, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I’m so glad I didn’t. The response since Food for the Dead’s publication has been renewing and hopeful. I’ve met readers who didn’t know much about Ukraine beyond the current full-scale invasion and who felt that they’d learned a lot through my poems. I’ve met readers who loved the stories of my grandmothers throughout the collection. I’ve met readers who let me know they really want my country to survive. In those moments, it feels like the work of being a poet is worthwhile.

Food for the Dead is shortlisted for the Forward Arts Foundation’s Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection. It’s a huge honour to be included on the shortlist alongside some amazing poets. I’m proud and grateful, and I hope that through the shortlisting more readers will be inclined to engage with the collection, to learn a bit about Ukraine or to hear about my family. I’ll be celebrating at the awards ceremony alongside my friends and supervisors from Manchester Metropolitan University, where I’m currently working on my PhD. I’m lucky to be surrounded by such supportive people.

What I’ve learnt from writing these poems is that there is a way beyond the myth of poetry to a sense of truth. It’s a painful one. But it’s the only one worth following.

By Charlotte Shevchenko Knight

All information correct at time of going to press

 

Charlotte Shevchenko Knight won the Laurel Prize 2024. Food for the Dead is published by Penguin and is available to buy now. For more information, click here.