This publication reflects  on the personal experiences of exile and life in the face of the war of the participants of Natalia Fedorova‘s mini-course War and Decay of Language that took place in November 2022. People from Russia, Canada, Georgia, Kazhakstan and Germany took part in the course.

During the course the main question we were answering was if there is an inherent connection between the war and decay it causes and the deformation of the language. Be it the language of censorship or the language of experimental poetry that reflects the contemporary condition of the language. Can the language hurt and can the language be hurt?

After the end of the course participants were invited to contribute the work done over the course to this publication and also and open call was announced. The collected volume got the name Ne(moi)text (Не мой текст) following the logic of bracketonyms, that allow the word to have multiple layers.

The texts vary from autofiction to experimental poetry and are sorted in two categories: those who stayed and those who left. All texts are written in Russian.