Carol Rumens (1944–2026) was a British poet, renowned as the Guardian’s Poem of the Week columnist. Each Monday, I eagerly anticipated new poems and the chance to discover a talented new poet. 

Today I received the sad news of her death; she died on April 25, while I was thinking either the column was closed or she was unwell.

She likely introduced many emerging poets, giving them a valuable platform. Through her role in Poem of the Week, she emerged as the leading facilitator of poetic talent in English-language media. 

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She frequently composed thoughtful critiques that showcased poets from across the globe and never dismissed those who were unknown or neglected.

Many of her selections have become my favorite poems.

I will pay tribute to her by sharing a Poem of the Week: “Welcome to Donetsk” by Anastasia Taylor-Lind, an English-Swedish photojournalist and poet who reflects on her experiences working in Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

In her accompanying note, Carol Rumens writes that “‘Welcome to Donetsk’ responds to the earlier conflict in Ukraine, ignited in 2014 by the seizure of the Donbas region by Russian-backed separatists. Now Taylor-Lind is once more in the country to cover the war. Recalling a time when the city would have had tourists and visitors, the postcard view reveals the river-threaded spaciousness of Donetsk, Ukraine's fifth-largest city. Reading the plants is a “wartime trick” for finding out whether the inhabitants are still alive and present. The syntax here complicates the statement that the watered plants prove the person who cares for them is alive, suggesting the plants are themselves offering a reassuring “proof of life” to their beleaguered owners."

You teach me this wartime trick –
to look for living pot plants
in the windows on Kievska Avenue.
Most are crisped and brown.

But one green geranium
and a succulent spider plant
offer proof of life
for the person who waters them.

Whole apartment blocks are abandoned.
Collapsed telephone lines,
blown-up branches
litter the road.

No voices,
no tinkering metalwork in the distance,
no buses, no playing children.
Leaves rustle white noise.

You say, It’s like Sunday every day.
Stray dogs and swallows,
and the soft thud of shelling.