A couple of days ago I found a short collection of poems that better articulates most things I have tried to write and say since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps this should come as no surprise; a poet able to cohesively articulate realities that, at times, feel so unutterably vast, vague, or close that even to try and speak about them seems impossible. In 1966, Seamus Heaney released his first collection of poems: Death of a Naturalist. This book went on to be one of the most recognised collections in the last one hundred years and firmly immortalised its author as the poet of his generation. Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Robert Lowell described him as ‘the most important Irish poet since Yeats.’ Today, he is a household name, read and studied all over the world. But I wonder, each time he picked up his pen, did Heaney truly know the impact he would make after his work was shared? Was it only for himself that he took time to carefully illustrate his internal experiences? Do all writers create in the knowledge that their words will be read beyond their death, beyond their country? I rediscovered Heaney’s poetry last week, after my return from Pokrovsk, a city in the Donetsk Oblast of eastern Ukraine that has been devastated by the fighting. Heaney’s words reminded me of the life-giving importance of creating. Putting pen to paper can impact places, structures, and people far beyond the limits of any author’s imagined aims. It can even help to create warmth when there is none, light when there is little, and bring over 5,000 Ukrainian civilians back to their homes. It can start with the pen.

Over the last two years I have had the fortune of being part of a growing NGO that creates shatterproof and insulating windows for those living on the frontline in Ukraine. The organisation is called Insulate Ukraine. I know nothing about windows and even less about engineering, but I went out to Izyum, a ruined city in the Kharkiv Oblast on 28^th December 2022, to help a friend who had a simple idea. Along with a hat and a winter jacket, I brought with me a camera, a notepad, and a pen. I will never forget the extent of the destruction we witnessed that first time we drove into Izyum. Growing up in sleepy rural Scotland, I hadn’t seen anything like it. Almost every building showed scars of an alien sort of violence. If a house, apartment, petrol station, school, hospital or shop wasn’t completely destroyed, then black-curtaining fire stains and eye-socket bullet holes defaced what remained. Whether from missile strikes, bullets, or the mines still hidden in the long grass and in the flower beds of homes, thousands of glass windows had been shattered. In their place, civilians had found quick solutions like wooden (OSB) boards, road signs, carpets, and even bullet-protective sandbags. Anything they could get their hands on. Up to that point, the Battle of Izyum (February – April 2022) had seen some of the worst fighting. Overcome, Ukraine had been forced to retreat before launching their Kharkiv counteroffensive in early September, reclaiming the once beautiful city days later. What they found on its liberation was a place of ruins and a mass grave; 440 raped, tortured, or murdered bodies had been buried in a pine forest that stands tall, to the north of Izyum.

Lack of windows and insulation are a huge problem for people living in the war-torn areas. The solutions that civilians were using simply did not work. Homes were freezing, some with ice sheeted on the interior of the windowpanes. Inhabitants were living with gloves, hats, thick trousers and two or three jackets on, day and night. Some slept in their baths, less affected by the drafts that escaped from the sides of the wooden boards. After we parked up our car in Izyum, we met a woman, Elena, who wanted to help. We explained our purpose and she offered her evacuated daughter's house for us to live in, and then asked her neighbour if we could install our first window. Her own house was at the edge of town, in the shadow of the forest where she lived with her mother and husband. Five months previously, she had lost her son to the fighting.

Using a combination of polythene, PVC piping and piping insulation, we set to work on her neighbour’s house and then returned the next day to record any change in temperature. There was an increase of 16 degrees Celsius. It was clear, my friend’s window solution worked. Word spread amongst the civilians of Izyum and we began to teach a small team of locals the building and installation method. Before we knew it, an organisation began to take shape. Today, Insulate Ukraine has installed over 34,000 windows across Kherson, Dnipro, Lyman, Izyum, Nikopol and throughout their surrounding villages.

During that genesis trip to Izyum, I tried to write down as much as I could. With a background in engineering, my friend is the brains behind the entire organisation, and Insulate Ukraine became his life. I was not in the position to commit the same amount of time, but I wanted to help. I wanted to stay involved and to try and make a difference. Almost anyone who has been to Ukraine will state something of the indomitable spirit of the people. It is true. It is infectious. Their ability to strive for and reinstate a place of home, and of life, is impossible not to be affected by. And so, Insulate Ukraine became part of my life too. But it was the pen that allowed me to play my part. By recording the stories of the people that we helped, I managed to gain press coverage of Insulate Ukraine’s work and, week by week, funding began to come in. Now, as part of a bigger team, this process continues. Along with the materials, this funding allows Insulate Ukraine to provide work for 30 civilians, jobless from the war, who install windows in their local region. All windows are free for those who receive them.

Anyone who can create can make change. I have seen it happen firsthand. Only a week ago I found myself standing once more with a pen and a notepad. This time I was in a coal mine – a new potential Insulate Ukraine project. The devastated city of Pokrovsk lay behind us, some three kilometers away, and the Russian frontline was edging ever closer, four kilometres further. Within the mine compound, I felt a strange sense of security. Serenity. Perhaps it was just me, but seeing the miners continue their work, descending a couple of hundred metres below surface before remerging hours later covered in soot; watching the freight train depart with the cars of coal to both cities and the frontline; and understanding how valuable an asset this mine is to Ukraine, made me think that we were, for a brief moment, working as one machine. I felt a small part of something bigger, far greater. It was the pen that made me feel like that. We walked further into the compound and while the Insulate Ukraine window installers began measuring up the damage done to the on-site hospital – over 80 windows destroyed from a recent strike – I took time to try and gather where I was. The long entrance hall was dark but for the glare of two emergency exit lights either end. In the far corner, a candle was lit with a list of names of individuals from the mine who had been killed in the fighting. An eerie spiritual warmth in such a crude place of industry. A Ukrainian woman’s voice was heard on the tannoy, ‘Emergency, emergency, all head to the shelter.’ It played over and over again but this had been happening for months. I turned a corner and saw a poster of a Ukrainian soldier reloading his gun and a miner with a shovel in her right hand. The soldier is defending his country, the miner is supplying her country with resources to keep going. They are both fighters. They are both fighting for their home and for their freedom. It was then that I thought of Heaney and a line I remembered from his poem, Digging: ‘Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.’

Art is at its purest when it affects, and for this there needs to be an audience. Once the work of the author or creator is done, the role of the receiver comes into play. Poetry, in particular (in its truest form), is not intended to be read just as a text but experienced as a work. It is only then that the words can go beyond the page, where impact can begin to form. When speaking of the potential power of art, then an audience is intrinsic. But this can be, and so often is, abused. In short forms of today (social media, news blogs, concise articles, etc.), this ‘online’ way of expression can often become didactic and negative, even to the point of hateful. This opinion-based way of communication will be ignored and, if it doesn’t, will lead to nothing positive nor tangible other than the fulfillment of some indulgent space within the author, and an unconstructive reaction. There are many ways to write, and this is one of them. If writing can alter fates, then this form is a hindrance at best, an enemy at worst. Imagine if all writers and artists saw their craft as a way by which they can genuinely enforce change in the world? Imagine if writers wrote each word like it meant a window being made for a broken home? The Insulate Ukraine windows cost 15 dollars each. My writing this article alone will provide insulation and natural light to more than three homes. Three families that can be warm this winter. Words matter. Writing can alter the world, for good and for bad. It just depends within whose hand that pen lies, snug as a gun.