Odesa's Naked Poets Reflect on Art, Identity, and Russian Influence

What is Odesa like for contemporary artists? The members of the poetry and music group Naked Poets talked about this and contemporary literature, Russian influence, consciousness, and the desire to understand who you are in this world: Denys Dmitriev, Katrusia Kharchenko, and Danko Ptashynyi. Watch the full interview on YouTube and read the shortened version for an exclusive interview about youth, culture, and aspirations for the future.

How did the story of the Naked Poets begin and how did you find each other?

Denys Dmitriev: We knew each other from literary evenings, where we saw each other, heard each other, and got to know each other. Then, somehow, fate brought us all together by the Odesa writer Vita Brevis. We hung out at his place and talked about poetry, literature, and art in general. We realized that we liked each other's poetry and didn't really like everyone else's, so we decided to stick together and do something of our own.

We thought for a long time about what format it would be in, how to call it, what to do. The name Naked Poets comes from a story by William Burroughs called "Naked Lunch." The concept was to let everyone see what everyone has at the end of their pen, absolutely sincerely, openly and without added metaphor, closeness, formality, to be as sincere as possible with themselves, with the reader, viewer, listener to whom we are addressing.

I started out by reading in physical education classes at Robert Rozhdestvensky College instead of doing anything there. I had a pile of books at home, and I would choose among all of them, piles of unnecessary, out-of-print books- interesting copies, good poets, the silver age, and all the rest. But then, when you discover something new, you start to move away from the old and see the difference, the quality, see what is closer to you, not just some of the most obvious and well-known things.

I started it all with music, I loved making it. I had very limited opportunities to do so. And then, when these opportunities disappeared altogether, I thought about what I had to express myself somehow, to give free rein to my emotions and feelings. I had a pencil and paper and decided why not write. I wrote the first text and thought, wow, it seems to be good, it's cool.

In your description, you say that you are a chemist who uses substances to destroy Soviet books and your stereotypes. Is this a metaphor or real destruction?

Denis Dmitriev: The concept was that time stopped in February, and everyone in a separate room sat and read the same text in a circle for 15 minutes. I was sitting there, tearing up some Soviet book, and another comrade of ours, also from the Naked, Mikhail Gromovoy, was walking around at the same time, reading and tearing up Mayakovsky's poems. That's why it's so metaphorical, but it was also physically like that.

A journalist who writes poetry knows how to discuss culture and politics and openly reflects her sexuality in her clothes. Why are you interested in politics?

Katrusia Kharchenko. Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

Katrusia Kharchenko: Politics is what surrounds us. And it seems to me that if you perceive the world in one way or another, sooner or later you come to this, you realize that you have something to say. Actually, in our country, we can say it and we want to say it.

What are the main stereotypes about culture and literature that you have personally encountered?

Katrusia Kharchenko: About culture, this classic stereotype about suffering, the village, and the usual sharovar. When it comes to Odesa, it's our Odesa myth that surrounds us. And that's why it's interesting for me to reveal this in my work, to move away from this stereotype.

In fact, there are stereotypes that are quite pleasant, that I like, that I respond to, and some of them I may even broadcast. And if we talk about Odesa, I don't see anything wrong with this stereotype of a sunny southern city. It is the same with the state, and little by little a stereotype is beginning to form not of a country that is constantly suffering, but rather of a strong, fighting and strong-willed Ukraine.

Why do you choose to stay in Odesa, having all the opportunities for a safe life?

Katrusia Kharchenko: This is the place where I was born, formed and am being formed now, where I am interested in creating a cultural space and society in general around me. I feel like a part of it. I thought about leaving because of some security issues, but I realize that of course you can shake at night because of explosions, but at the same time, here I get up in the morning, go to work in my favorite museum, go with my favorite poets in the evening, read poetry, and this is something that gives me much more life. I feel life much more strongly here, despite the fact that there is a much higher risk of death.

Why did you choose poetry and how does it complement your life now?

Katrusia Kharchenko: I think that for me, like for my colleagues, it started simply with teenage reflections, which you start writing down, sublimating in your work, and then at some point I realized that poetry can be written more seriously, better, promoted, I wanted a stage to read on, and I started reading at literary events in Odesa, at apartment parties. A community emerged.

This community began to shape me as much as I shaped it. Now poetry is more about a certain lifestyle. My colleagues became friends, and it is now an integral part of me. It's about a way of seeing the world. Someone will see something, it will impress them, they will somehow digest it in themselves, and move on. Someone will turn it into music, and in poetry it turns into some images, words - it can be completely different.

You can sit at work, anywhere, brush your teeth in the morning, and something will come to you. You just have to write it down. It's somehow always with you, this process happens even if you don't directly write the text. You gain emotional experience, and it may somehow manifest itself, perhaps even unexpectedly digested into some images and emerge.

In fact, personally, I am very much inspired by contemporary Odesa poets, this is something that I am very much a part of. If we are talking about great literature, it is contemporary Ukrainian literature.

How do you see the general temperature in the city in terms of decolonization and communication with the authorities?

Katrusia Kharchenko: If we talk about the Odesa myth, there are many works about Odesa, its image with certain features, and we also write a lot about it. As for the authorities, we personally have almost no contact with them. If we are talking about some serious culture, something that is in demand, it is something rather outside the government. I think that people would rather go to a literary evening organized in a bar or library than something organized in a municipal institution. So I think these are really unrelated things. I feel like a part of this city. Hopefully, during the war, there will be some trace of me here too.

There is a sentence in your description: His wisdom goes deeper than ordinary accounting calculations. What is wisdom for you?

Danko Ptashynsky. Photo: Intent/Natalia Dovbysh

Danko Ptashynsky: First, I was put in a very uncomfortable position by the text from artificial intelligence that we wrote for ourselves. Wisdom is perhaps sincerity to oneself, to people, the realization of sincerity. It is the ability to admit that you are wrong, the ability to listen to smart people. I don't have a very strong connection with numbers. I was not very good at numbers at school.

At the same time, I have such a character that I try to rationalize everything, to simplify it a lot, to try to understand it through some rational reasoning. I try to understand the world rationally, but there is something that doesn't allow me to completely put it on the shelves. That's why poetry takes over this function, describing the world in a way that is completely opposite to my self-awareness of things.

What changes do you see as a result of the full-scale war?

Danko Ptashyn: I think that we have all grown up, regardless of age, we all had to somehow put away our childhood. Before the full-scale invasion, I was mostly Russian-speaking, and at the university my friend said to me, "Let's organize a week of Ukrainian. I thought, "Oh, yeah, she's trying to show me off? I say, let's organize our whole life in Ukrainian. She said, "Let's do it. And it turned out to be as comfortable as possible. But at the same time, I try to research, understand, and study in the realities that have developed now. It seems to me that Odesa is quite comfortable for people of my age, especially when compared to other cities. Kharkiv is very close to Odesa in terms of vibe.

What did you know about the country and its culture when you were at school?

Danko Ptashyn: I knew something, that is, conditionally, from the school curriculum. I was aware of the Sixties, the Executed Renaissance, and the first monument to Shevchenko in Kharkiv, but at the same time I perceived all of this as something that happened, so what. But after the full-scale invasion, I somehow got a desire to go deeper, to study it.

For example, I am very interested in the history of the Kharkiv region in the 16th and 17th centuries, because Slobozhanshchyna can be considered the center of Eastern Ukrainians in a certain way. And I also lack any research on the Odesa region, Odesa region in general, of the Ottoman period. I know very little and I want to learn more, but it doesn't help because there are few sources. It's just the history of my region, when Russian propaganda says that Catherine founded Odesa, then you can read a little bit, go a little deeper, and realize that this is at least a manipulation.

I wonder what happened before. Why do we have continuity with ancient Greece, but this is not shown anywhere, it cannot be seen or felt. And the same with Hadjibey, everyone knows Hadjibey, but little is known about the system, how people lived in that period. This is lacking. Unfortunately, mostly in Odesa, the cultural and informational environment was very much Russified, under great Russian influence. This is, in part, due to the large sums of money that Russia allocated for this.

I remember my childhood with some Russian TV series that were constantly on TV. This is supposedly a great Russian culture, but as a separate branch that departs from this, it is purely Odesa culture, something different. We have our own Odesa language. We have Babel, Ilf, Petrov, Pushkin was in Odesa - this is the cultural heritage of Odesa.

These two titans essentially dominated the information space and created the appearance of a certain opposition, that I was either a Russian or an Odessan, who was completely separate, and there was no alternative. There was no understanding that there could be a Ukrainian Odesa. I can hardly imagine that back then, for example, I could have spoken Ukrainian in a bus, or someone else could have spoken Ukrainian, and said, "On Hretska Street, please."

Марія Литянська