The work unfolds as an organic process, emerging almost automatically as a direct extension of lived experience. Poems arise as inner growth rather than deliberate construction—a quiet cultivation shaped by attention, instinct, and necessity. Writing functions simultaneously as retreat and return: a descent into the inner world, followed by the re-emergence carrying fragments, images, and fleeting phantasms shaped by that inward journey.
Nature plays a central role in this process, acting both as mirror and counterforce. Its presence reflects interior states while also confronting them with moments of wildness and beauty. Within these encounters lie subtle revelations, sensed intuitively and translated into verse. The poems thus form a space where inner and outer landscapes intersect, allowing perception, memory, and environment to resonate within a single poetic gesture.
The project is part of the subthemes Symbiotic Futures – Ecopoetics in the Age of Extinction, Unruly Forms – Experiments in the Poetic Wild.
Author
Olena Volkohon
Olena Volkohon is a Ukrainian poet currently living in Budapest, Hungary, where she relocated to escape the war in her home country. She writes poetry and spends much of her time moving through the city, attentive to its rhythms and quiet details. Her work has been recognised in Ukraine, including a fourth-place award in a nationwide literary competition for one of her poetry collections.
Before focusing primarily on writing, Volkohon was actively engaged in contemporary art. She participated in exhibitions in Kyiv, realised installation projects, and led sculpting workshops at street festivals, creating surrealist sculptural works. While her artistic practice once extended across multiple media, her current work is devoted almost entirely to poetry. For her, nothing now surpasses the clarity and intensity of black text on a white page.
