Sunflowers: Ukrainian Poetry on War, Resistance, Hope and Peace - Paperback

by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Editor)

Ilya Kaminsky calls the book "a moving and powerful testament to what poetry can do to both report from the times of crisis and uplift us in such time."

Vitaly Chernetsky calls it "deep emotional truth about the horrors of war. Moving and essential reading."

Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach considers it "much needed action in a fracturing world."

The Sunflowers poetry collection, edited by Indian-American poet Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, brings together poems on war and peace by seventy-eight poets from Ukraine and other parts of the world. The anthology presents works in their Cyrillic originals and translations, alongside poems by Anglophone writers from around the globe.

Why Sunflowers? The choice of title emerged from a sense of moral clarity. No justification for invading a sovereign nation can withstand ethical scrutiny. War-regardless of its declared motives or geographic location-ultimately stands in opposition to our shared humanity. In times of war, we are bound together by its consequences, irrespective of the positions we occupy or the strategies we defend. No conflict is ever truly one-sided, and no military triumph can erase the profound human cost that accompanies it.

The deeper inspiration behind publishing Sunflowers arises from a passage in Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change by Thich Nhat Hanh. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh witnessed the disintegration of his country and the suffering of his people during the Vietnam War. He chose exile because he could not take sides in a conflict that divided his nation; the grief of all involved mattered to him. He later wrote: "We who have touched war have a duty to bring the truth about war to those who have not had a direct experience of it. We are the light at the tip of the candle. It is really hot, but it has the power of shining and illuminating."