Artur Dron turns trenches into faith’s language

Artur Dron’s – Poet and serviceman Artur Dron—wounded in October 2024 and still writing in Lviv—talks about faith, love, and memory through the lived reality of war: why “Trench God” feels different, how poetry stopped after 24 February 2022 and returned on the front line, a

He grew up in Pidmykhailivtsi in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. published his first poetry collection at nineteen. a second at twenty-two. and by twenty-five was already known for award-winning prose. Then the full-scale invasion interrupted his journalism Master’s studies—so Artur Dron put on a serviceman’s uniform. answering to the call sign ‘David’ after the biblical combatant of Goliath. He was serving in eastern and southern Ukraine with the 125th Territorial Defence Brigade, and he was wounded in October 2024.

Since then, medical treatment has kept him in Lviv, and he continues to write. In an interview conducted with Olena Pshenychna, Dron returns again and again to one idea: that war strips life down until only what matters can survive—faith, love, and the names of the people who fell.

They meet in a place he calls “the most peaceful”—the courtyard at St John’s Lavra of the Studite Monks within the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Lviv. Dron explains that he has been coming here since 2019 to see Father Vsevolod. who has been his spiritual mentor “ever since [he] was 17 or 18. ” and especially during “what was quite a wild time” for him. He describes the courtyard as an oasis of calm: a place where he could return on leave after joining the army. sit quietly. and “think differently. ” with an “absolute peace” he says only grows more valuable once you have learned what loss costs.

That sense of peace runs straight into his writing about God—and into the sharpness of his questions. Dron recalls that at one of the readings he was asked what he was most afraid of. It was the first time he had properly thought about it. He says he answered that his greatest fear is “completely losing faith in anything. ” because life becomes. “to a large extent. devoid of meaning” when you have nothing to believe in.

But he does not speak about faith as an easy certainty. He describes encountering things he “do[es] not fully understand. ” and says that when understanding fails. people naturally turn toward the One “who is supposed to understand everything.” He admits that sometimes he and others air grievances with God. and he frames a central question of war and God: why does God allow it?. Dron insists that responsibility cannot be pushed away—“God” did not start this war. “it was started by specific people. by the Russians specifically.” He argues that it is not God killing his people. but those who “made that choice.”.

He describes the temptation that comes with grief: when loss arrives. it becomes difficult not to move from “why did You not save him?” to “why did You kill him?” In his account. the point is not to dismiss faith in anger. but to name the struggle honestly. “This is not about anger towards Him,” he says. “It is about a genuine struggle to understand.”.

He also refuses a single, tidy explanation. In the examples he offers. his contention with God is precisely the unevenness he feels: why intervene in one situation but not another. He points to his own injury as an example. He says he could tell himself that he survived because God saved him. yet doing that would force him to admit that God did not save his friend. “And I do not want to say that,” he adds, searching instead for “some other answer.”.

The shape of his faith is clearer when he speaks about his own definition inside the trenches. In his book of prose. Hemingway Knows Nothing. he introduces a phrase—“the Trench God.” Dron describes how “everything superfluous” is stripped away at war-war. trench-trench. “so close to mutilation and death.” He says even thoughts of country or nation can fall back until only family remains: a person you love. the person next to you. In those moments, he says, dialogue with God becomes unlayered—“as sincere as possible, and louder than usual.”.

He also says that in such circumstances, the question “where is God when this is happening to us?” can disappear, because God is “felt very clearly,” “right there with you, by your side.” That is a faith drawn from proximity, not from distance.

The “in-between world” he describes—rehabilitation. civilian life. and military life overlapping—leads him to another belief: the calm he needs often comes from people who have lived both sides of war. He recounts how in 2023. on leave from the front line. he met two brothers-in-arms in Lviv for the first time in a civilian setting. He calls that meeting one of the calmest and most normal parts of his leave. When he came back for treatment after being wounded. several close brothers-in-arms were also in Lviv at the time: some already discharged. some undergoing treatment. others in rehabilitation. He spent much of his time at the hospital and talks about speaking with wounded servicemen there.

In his telling. veterans bring back a certain “sense of justice. ” plus “sincerity and generosity.” He says the experience of existential conditions teaches people to share what they have. stand up for one another. and see everything “as if laid bare.” He also acknowledges how that can make things harder in civilian life—why it matters. in his words. “to stick together.”.

It is not only the theology that changes under pressure. So does his writing. In 2022, he says, he had been talking about losing another kind of faith—faith in poetry. He wrote: “literature won’t kill anyone. a poem cannot shield you from a bullet.” At the start of the full-scale invasion. he stopped writing altogether.

He explains why: in that moment, something “more practical” became important—something you could see as actually helping survival. He says that many of those engaged in any pursuit that could not harm the enemy or protect people they love seemed pointless. He cannot imagine thinking. on 24 February 2022. “Right. let’s stop and write a poem. because this needs to be recorded for future generations.”.

He describes the early months as dominated by volunteer efforts and the urge to join the military. His first poem after the invasion began when he saw the news about the maternity hospital in Mariupol. That poem later appears in the poetry collection We Were Here. titled “Trisagion.” He says he wrote his first poem in March. “perhaps rather emotionally. impulsively. ” and then didn’t write anything until the end of August or September.

Then poetry returns in a way that feels earned, not resumed. He says We Were Here was born on the front line. and that he dedicated it to his brothers-in-arms. with an epigraph featuring one of them: “Write about what is inside us.” He links the return to a moment when everything had been “truly… cut off.” He describes being near Kramatorsk when they were not yet in combat. digging a defensive line “in case of a breakthrough by the Russians.” He says he had started reading again by then after not reading at all.

And as “superfluous” layers fall away, he finds that writing returns as a form of witnessing. When a brother-in-arms says or does something special. he catches himself thinking: “this is literature. ” something worth writing down so someone else might see its power. In one example included in the collection, he describes news of Balakliia being liberated. The men recorded a video of tearing down a propaganda Russian poster and finding Taras Shevchenko underneath it with the lines: “Fight on. and you shall overcome!. God helps you in your struggle.” He calls it a moment that “amazed” him and caught him “completely off guard.”.

He makes the story do work in his own mind: he says it convinced him negative numbers exist—“there can be minus two”—and that the earlier problem was not the equation. but his own lack of understanding. He connects it to memories of the literary canon during the Revolution of Dignity. when people depicted them in helmets with Molotov cocktails and quoted them just before they died.

He tells another story he includes in the book: a brother-in-arms is killed. and his wife—himself a poet writing spiritual poetry—writes a poem on the very day she learns of his death. Dron says his first thought was that if a person. while losing what matters most. can turn to creative expression. the fault does not lie in the “minus five” equation. It may be that he simply failed to understand that “minus and plus infinity exist as well.” He says his attitude toward literature changed from that point.

When asked what front-line poetry was for him—reaction to events. reaction to people. or a desire to enshrine them—he says it varies. Some pieces aim to enshrine what happened so it can’t vanish into time. Others arrive when a brother-in-arms speaks something so powerful that it cannot remain “spoken and vanish.” He describes poems as parting words for those no longer here. He also says the aim is not to claim that poetry compensates for death. As an example, he mentions a poem about his brother-in-arms Ivan and his bicycle. Poetry cannot compensate for Ivan’s death. he says. but it can capture “a fraction” of the grown man’s childlike sincerity and his dream of a bicycle.

That idea—writing about what matters most—becomes his definition of literary language and voice. He says he has one principle that never changes: writing about what matters most to you. It may not go viral. gather millions of reactions. or trend on Facebook. but sincerity and truth come from writing what feels central. He says he followed that principle during his student days with his book Dormitory No. 6, when youthful infatuations, heartbreaks, love, arguments, and the push-pull of relationships mattered most. The language of that early work, he says, was youthful, often clichéd, lyrical, romantic.

Then. he says. “by 2022 or 2023. ” something else became paramount: the “constant edge. ” the experience of goodbyes. the longing across distance from those he loves. and a profound brotherhood with people he had not known until recently. The result, he says, was a shift: language became more laconic, categorical, and clipped. He insists that at war. every word carries weight. and writing must treat each word as if it might be the last spoken.

In that same war-reality, reading itself takes on a different function. He notes that Ukrainian soldiers reading in dugouts is often seen on social media, and he explains reading does not only boost morale or national consciousness. Sometimes it is entertainment, a way to fight boredom.

He offers two examples. The first is in autumn 2022. when he and his unit were sitting in a trench beyond Torske. on the front line. He says he read aloud from an e-book on his phone—Stanislav Aseyev’s The Torture Camp on Paradise Street. He describes reading about an even tougher captivity while they were enduring their own first shellings and first combat missions. He says it helped them because it offered an example: a man imprisoned in that Donetsk concentration camp survived. wrote a book. and returned—so maybe they could get through their own ordeal.

He also describes how his brother-in-arms filmed a short story of him reading aloud and posted it on Instagram via Starlink after returning from their position. He says a publishing house shared the video and, during his first leave, gifted him an e-reader.

For a second example. he mentions reading aloud on the front line in December from Liuba Zahorovska’s book My UPA. He quotes a dramatic excerpt about escaping NKVD men: “I stepped out of the house. the NKVD men entered the yard. I started to run. they fired. a bullet hit me in the chest once. but I kept running. they fired again. a bullet hit my leg. and I kept firing back.” He says these stories. being shot at yet moving and surviving. inspire the men—especially a generation with body armour—because it makes them feel like descendants of “seriously tough guys.”.

He then shifts to another kind of reading, less heroic and more psychological. A brother-in-arms, after his first missions, first concussion, and hard experiences, suffered severe anxiety and panic. Dron describes how the man was not much of a reader but wanted a book and had Starlink connection. He says the only book he could find was The Witch of Konotop. which he describes as filled with complex. archaic vocabulary; for this purpose. Dron says it was like forcing through dense brush and did not help.

So Dron used his work experience as an event manager and book publicist to find something right for the man. He describes long chats. asking what kinds of books he liked. what kinds of girls he liked. and using those answers to choose a book. He says The Old Lion Publishing House had previously published Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild about a man who gave away his money and went tramping. and the same author also wrote about climbing Everest. Dron says Bohdan was a massive fan of mountains, hiking, and travel, dreaming of conquering Everest one day. The publisher sent a digital copy. and Dron says it matched perfectly: it didn’t cure his concussion or make him an avid reader. but on days when he felt “absolute crap. ” reading about Everest allowed him to escape and dream.

That brings Dron back to his larger argument about literature: in the trenches, even when the phone is charged and there is only a book to reach for, literature can still function. It turns time into something bearable and gives the mind somewhere else to go.

Love, for him, is the center that holds through all of this. Dron says he has always adhered to the principle that love points to the right answer across every topic. In the context of a major war when enemies want to kill everyone. he says the ultimate expression of love is “leaving everything behind” and standing up to defend. He describes what makes love durable: thinking of his mother and his girlfriend on terrifying days.

He explains love through small, physical scenes. In the Serebryansky Forest. in a trench meant for “two people at most. ” three squeeze in. pressed back-to-back. cover themselves with a single sleeping bag in minus twenty. and light up “that one cigarette between us all to keep warm.” He also recounts waking up at their position there in Hemingway Knows Nothing—when his brother-in-arms says “Davydenko Davyd Davydovych!” and tells him they are already being relieved in twelve minutes. Dron says he loved Kesha “more than I had ever loved anyone” at that moment.

He gives another figure: Andrii Teodorovych. whom he calls an altruist who opens a packet of biscuits. doesn’t eat them himself. and passes them around so everyone can get some if there is anything left. He stresses these are not abstract emotions. In hospitals after being wounded. he says he saw love in guys with complex injuries. including amputated limbs. lifting each other’s spirits and making each other laugh. Those daily manifestations, he argues, restore faith and meaning.

He also ties love to memory. When asked why memory and names matter in his texts—why he calls people by name. especially his brothers-in-arms—he returns to a personal fear: forgetting. He says in early 2023. after being on the front line and after his first concussions. he became afraid he would not remember. In spring 2023. he started catching himself struggling to recall things from autumn 2022. and he says it nearly sent him into a panic. He describes writing a diary in 2023 to record everything as his battle against that fear.

For him, remembering and enshrining becomes one way to win, to compensate for something. Writing won’t bring people back, he says, but literature for him is “telling a story about someone.”

He connects that to a broader observation: many people will not tell their own story—because they are no longer here, because they can’t articulate it, because they don’t think it matters, or because they are afraid.

The way memory travels beyond his own life becomes clearest in the letters he describes receiving. He recounts a story from We Were Here about a photograph in a cemetery that had fallen. He picked it up and wrote a poem about it. Before the book launch, he says he was told the widow of this fallen soldier would attend. He hadn’t known the man in life, only indirectly knowing he was from his battalion. He went to pray at the Field of Mars. picked up that photograph. and found a note there: “Happy anniversary. bunny. I love you.” He realized the woman arriving at the presentation was the writer of that note.

He says he felt unsure what to do with that knowledge and decided at least that he wouldn’t read the poem aloud. Then he returned to duty. He says the woman later wrote to him. sending a photo of the book opened to the poem and showing her husband’s grave in the background. with a message: “I don’t know if that poem was about my note. but now it is about my note.” He calls that an experience that taught him again that negative numbers have plus and minus infinity.

He shares another story tied to a poem titled “First Corinthians.” In it. he writes a line: “love is wrapped in sleeping bags and carried out.” He says that phrase reflects their first tragic evacuation. when they couldn’t carry bodies on stretchers and wrapped them in sleeping bags instead. Later a woman messaged him on Facebook. saying she had read the poem. knew he served in the same battalion as her husband. and wanted to

gift him her book about him. She says the poem is important to her because when she reads about sleeping bags she feels she is learning how her husband died and how he was evacuated. Dron says he did not reply for a week while consulting with the men about what to do. because the person was indeed one of the first pulled out of the trench and carried away—“his body we had carried out

back then.” He says that after that he wrote back and the woman sent him the book about this guy. giving him the details: the husband’s callsign was Orel. and her book was called The Island of Orel.

When he is asked what prose is. he describes it as a longer conversation that can cover more topics than poetry. Poetry, he says, addresses a single theme with maximum concentration and emotion. Prose, he calls a calmer, less emotional, longer conversation where multiple topics can be raised. Still. he says that the central principle stays the same: he writes what he wants to say and chooses the best form—rhymed or unrhymed poem. or prose.

The collection We Were Here gave him the stepping stone back into writing; his book of prose. Hemingway Knows Nothing. came next almost immediately. Dron says that in the summer of 2023. after he sent the manuscript of the poetry book to a publishing house. the next day he decided his next book would be a collection of prose called Hemingway Knows Nothing.

He explains why the title matters to him. He says war literature has always had major writers like Remarque and Hemingway, and he used to think so too. But when he and others faced their own full-scale war. the perception of war literature was overturned and those writers’ texts were called into question. He says Hemingway had been personally important throughout his youth. and even at the beginning of 2022 he still believed in him. On the front line, he says he told other men about Hemingway’s books, and Hemingway remained his favourite writer.

But Dron argues Hemingway did not survive the Russo-Ukrainian war. and in his view Hemingway “had never encountered anything like this.” Dron says Hemingway’s first war was across the ocean from him and essentially did not threaten his parents or relatives. By contrast. Dron says. men like him went to serve at a young age—they did not go because they wanted to play the hero. They went because the war threatened them specifically. and they had to grow up quickly and realize they could protect their fathers and mothers.

He describes wanting to write a war that neither Hemingway nor Remarque nor Vonnegut nor Jünger nor anyone else had seen. At first he wrote only two or three pieces. then stopped because he says he was sick to death of the army and exhausted. In spring of “last year. ” he returned for medical treatment. had his heart treated. took medical leave. improved his health. and cleared his head. He says in spring he wrote two pieces for Radio Culture. then worked on the book bit by bit during periods of leave in the Kharkiv region and the Zaporizhzhia region. He says the bulk of the work after he was wounded happened while undergoing treatment in winter. and he set a goal to finish the book by spring.

He describes coming to believe writing can work like psychotherapy. He wanted the book to become a “psychotherapy session of sorts.” He says he even shows one method in it: prolonged exposure therapy. used in treating PTSD. particularly with soldiers returning from war. He explains it as recounting the same traumatic story many times. placing yourself before that experience. trying to recreate it in detail. He says each time the story differs, new details emerge, and over time the person can free themselves.

He says he wanted to show this process: placing yourself before fear and trauma. looking it in the eyes. speaking—“speak. speak. speak”—until freedom arrives. He says he recounts painful and personal things in the book and defines it as “a soldier’s testimony about the experience of a major war. ” describing it as “a book of testimonies.”.

He also says his prose keeps the same level of openness and sincerity as his poetry, even if he hasn’t yet mastered comparative analysis between the genres. He says he keeps language focused on others, with names and details—details that remain vital to him in poetry and in prose.

The interview ends with one question and no neat solution. Dron is asked about a poem that ends with a question: “I think about that box you mentioned. How did you pack those things?. How do you live with all that?” He says he does not have a ready answer. When there is no ready answer. he says. you must consider which path holds more love—what love points to in that situation.

He says love should not tear people apart. Because war is one cause, but experiences differ, even within the same family. He says the answer is not excessive aggression, but mutual understanding and talking things through. Love. he adds. also points toward responsibility—mature love acts with responsibility in difficult circumstances. and sometimes it means protecting those you love.

The conversation is presented as an English translation of an interview originally published by The Ukrainians on 9 July 2025, updated for accuracy where necessary.

Artur Dron Hemingway Knows Nothing We Were Here Trench God Ukrainian literature poetry prose faith war testimony Lviv 125th Territorial Defence Brigade St John’s Lavra Taras Shevchenko Mariupol maternity hospital Balakliia liberation prolonged exposure therapy PTSD