Słobodnik, Włodzimierz

Słobodnik, Włodzimierz, b 19 September 1900 in Novoukrainka, Yelysavethrad county, Kherson gubernia, d 10 July 1991 in Warsaw. Polish poet and translator. From 1927 he produced numerous poetry collections and several books of satire and poetry for children. Some of his poems are on Ukrainian themes. In the years 1939–41 he lived in Lviv and Kyiv and belonged to the Writers' Union of Ukraine. From 1958 he lived in Warsaw, where he had links with the Ukrainian Social and Cultural Society and contributed to its organs Nashe slovo and Ukraїns'kyi kalendar. He translated into Polish poems by Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Yurii Fedkovych, Yakiv Shchoholiv, Pavlo Tychyna, Maksym Rylsky, Mykola Bazhan, Mykola Tereshchenko, Leonid Pervomaisky, Ivan Drach, and Andrii Malyshko; edited Polish editions of Shevchenko’s (1955) and Rylsky’s (1965) selected poems; and written about Shevchenko. His poems have been translated into Ukrainian by Mykola Marfiievych, Dmytro Pavlychko, and Pervomaisky.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]