Archive of the Contemporary

Since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, contemporary Ukrainian poets have increasingly used Facebook as a forum for sharing their work. Unlike poets in the United States, where copyright law discourages writers from self-publishing their work, including on social media, Ukrainian poets use Facebook not only to share work in progress, but also to comment and even translate one another's poems. We argue that by using the "distant reading" method of applying statistical tools to a large archive of contemporary poetry, scholars become better close readers. Having created an archive of a large sample of recent Ukrainian poetry posted to Facebook, our article models data-driven tools that help scholars to understand how poetry, written and shared to social media in a time of war, has changed between 2014 and 2022. This novel use of Facebook as a literary tool clearly shows how poetic language changes in a time of war. It also points to ways that the large community of readers on social media has influenced what poets write

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