Mykhail Semenko (Ukrainian: Миха́йль Семе́нко) or Mykhailo Vasyliovich Semenko (Миха́йло Васи́льович Семе́нко; 31 December 1892 – 23 October 1937) was a Ukrainian poet, and a prominent representative of Ukrainian futurist poetry[1] of the 1920s. He is considered to be one of the lead figures of the Executed Renaissance.

Mykhail Semenko
Born31 December 1892
Kybyntsi, Russian Empire (today in Poltava Oblast, Ukraine)
Died23 October 1937 (1937-10-24) (aged 44)
Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union
OccupationPoet
LanguageUkrainian
NationalityUkrainian
GenrePoetry

He was a founder of futurist groups Aspanfut, Komunkult, Nova Generatsiya, and Kverofuturism, better known in English as "Panfuturism". He was an editor in couple of almanacs and the journal "Nova generatsiya". As a poet Semenko wrote primarily for urban audiences.

Semenko was an active participant of the movement that sought to break with the official Soviet cultural policy at the onset of the 20th century.[2] His dissident art led him to establish avant-garde groups in Kyiv and Kharkiv.[2] He established these futurist groups as an alternative to Russian Cubo-Futurism.[2] Along with several Ukrainian intellectuals, he was arrested in 1937, sentenced to death and shot in Kyiv on 23 October 1937.[3] In the 1957 he was rehabilitated by the Communists themselves.

References

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  1. ^ Preminger, Alex; Warnke, Frank J.; Hardison Jr., O. B. (2015). Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 878. ISBN 978-1-4008-7293-0.
  2. ^ a b c Zychowicz, Jessica (2020). Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First-Century Ukraine. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-4875-0168-6.
  3. ^ Relations, United States Congress Senate Committee on Foreign (1950). Expanded International Information and Education Program: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Eighty-first Congress, Second Session, on S. Res. 243, a Resolution Favoring an Expanded International Information and Education Program by the United States. July 5, 6 and 7, 1950. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. p. 342.

Sources

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