Hanna Komar lives in Minsk and writes poetry.
Since violent protests by protesters and harsh surveillance by the Belarusian government have become commonplace, her poems have gone from being personal to becoming documentary.
Over the past year, President Alexander Lukashenko's regime has arrested and detained journalists, activists and dissidents.
Many testify to brutal practices.
Hanna Komar wants to describe what she and thousands of others in Minsk have experienced over the past year.
- I feel that I am in danger every day.
I always have my mobile in airplane mode so that it cannot be traced.
Even social media must not be seen by the wrong people, she tells Kulturnyheterna.
A year of chaos
Her poems are included in the new anthology A Year in Belarus, which collects texts and poems by Belarusian authors and is published by Swedish PEN and the book publisher Atlas.
- Poetry is a perfect outlet.
And it can also help others to get a form of expression for all feelings and experiences, says Hanna Komar.
Many of the authors of the book, such as the Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexeyevich, live in exile after being threatened in various ways in their home country.
Mikael Nydahl has together with Ida Börjel collected the texts and been the editor of the anthology.
- We started working with this material almost exactly a year ago.
We reacted to the emergency and began translating texts from Minsk.
It was chronicles, poems and prose fragments, says Mikael Nydahl, who together with Ida Börjel was the editor of the book.
New solidarity
The texts in the anthology testify to a popular uprising that has entailed a new kind of solidarity.
Despite the fact that those who continue to show their dissatisfaction with the regime are afraid of being arrested and imprisoned, there is a community and a love for the country left.
- I am preparing a new collection of poems where my protest poems are included.
But as the situation is now in Belarus, they are considered extremist, as if I were some kind of terrorist, says Hanna Komar.
She describes how the circle of allied activists around her is shrinking as more people are arrested.
At any time, it can be her own turn, she says.
But a year after the beginning of the violent protests, she has received an admission letter from a university in London.
In September, she goes there to study a master's degree in creative writing.
- If I'm not arrested first, she says, and laughs a little.
- I will continue to write about and for Belarus.
I think my role in all of this is to heal people's wounds.