Contributor's contribution: Poets on war, war on poets
Someone is missing. There is a reason for that.
M.E. Grey, a Brussels-based poet, reflects on the Poets at War panel, part of the Passa Porta literary festival in March.
In June, Victoria Amelina won the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
She does not appear in this poem.
you take a seat in the auditorium to listen to the two Ukrainian poets, the translator, the moderator then — snap: your trivial reaction is still your reaction habitual conference-goer, you are trained to see and judge the all male panel and here you see seated on the little stage four men well, reflect: your privileged equity demand is probably not the most important idea in this room (well, reflect: equity is not a demand of privilege) then — more gradually: you see through the absence an empty chair reserved for the writer Victoria Amelina killed in July 2023