What gives people in Odesa the strength to carry on despite bombings and constant air-raid sirens? For many, it’s their children: their creativity, love of life, and love of words.

But children are often left alone in bomb shelters during power outages, shelling, and almost continuous sirens (sometimes several per hour), while their parents are fighting at the front or searching for work in a war-stricken economy.

To nurture children’s curiosity and creativity, we created the Poetry Studio, where they can learn to write and read poetry together. One thing they have taught us is how much comfort can be found in a line of verse, a melody, or a vivid image.

Poetry is needed now more than ever because it helps express the most impossible moments. It gives a breath of air, a piece of life. When nothing else remains, we can hold words and rhythm in our hands. In front of the empty wall of crisis, everyone needs a little verbal music, a balm.

We launched this Poetry Studio in the summer of 2023 in Odesa, Ukraine. Our first young poet was a child of war refugees. Since then, young poets from across the city and beyond have joined us. Some groups have only five participants, while others have 25 or more. Some are very young, others are high school students.

The war presents many challenges: each meeting depends on whether the neighborhood was shelled the day before. During an attack, parents may not let their children leave home. The meeting location can change. But we strive to hold these sessions. To ensure their poetry is not only about trauma, we take the children around Odesa for inspiration: they visit the local zoo, the legendary Odesa film studios, the old city, and parks. The children read poetry at these locations.

In just one year, we have already expanded our program: we now hold a continuous free poetry competition and an annual children’s poetry festival, New Odyssey. We launched the New Odyssey Almanac with children’s poetry. We also publish articles about young poets in Vechirnya Odesa, a popular city newspaper
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Almanac