Boychuk, Bohdan

Boychuk, Bohdan [Бойчук, Богдан; Bojčuk], b 11 October 1927 in the village of Bortnyky, Buchach county, Galicia, d 10 February 2017 in Kyiv. Poet, cofounder and member of the New York Group, writer, literary critic, and translator. An Ostarbeiter in Nazi Germany and postwar refugee, he lived in displaced persons camps in Germany until 1949, when he immigrated to the United States and settled in New York. An active member of the Ukrainian émigré cultural community, he was cofounder and coeditor of the New York Group’s serial publication Novi poeziï and the main organizer of the group’s publishing house. He was also an editor of literature (between 1961 and 1973) of the journal Suchasnist’, and a cofounder and coeditor of the literary journal Svito-vyd in Kyiv (1990–99).

Boychuk’s published modernist poetry, strongly influenced by the philosophy of Existentialism, includes Chas boliu (The Time of Pain, 1957), the long poem Zemlia bula pustoshnia (The Earth Was a Wasteland, 1959), Spomyny liubovy (Memories of Love, 1963), Virshi dlia Mekhiko (Poems for Mexico, 1964), Mandrivka til (The Journey of Bodies, 1967), Podorozh z uchytelem (Travels with the Teacher, 1976), Virshi, vybrani i peredostanni (Poems, Selected and Next to the Last, 1983), Tretia osin' (Third Autumn, 1991), and Kyivs'ki ekslibrysy (Kyiv Ex-Librises, 2006). A two volume edition of his selected poetry was published in Kyiv in 2007. His prose works include Dvi zhinky Al'berta (Albert’s Two Women, 2002), Try romany (Three Novels, 2004), Nad sakral'nym ozerom (At the Sacred Lake, 2006), and Moï feministky (My Feminists, 2011). He is also the author of Dvi dramy (Two Dramas, 1968) and a memoir Spomyny v biohrafiï (Memoirs within a Biography, 2003). Boychuk has translated Spanish and American poetry into Ukrainian, Ukrainian poetry (the poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych and Ivan Drach) into English, and has edited several anthologies and books of Ukrainian poetry (including collected works of Oleksa Stefanovych and Bohdan Kravtsiv), memoirs (of Yosyp Hirniak), and books on Ukrainian émigré artists.

Marko Robert Stech

[This article was updated in 2017.]