Steve’s father Michael Komarnyckyj came from Ukraine to Huddersfield in 1955 to work in the mills and Steve has remained strong to his roots.
He is a member of Huddersfield Ukrainian Club on Edgerton Road and researches and studies the history of the country.
He told the Examiner: “Pavlo Tychyna is the greatest Ukrainian poet of the 20th century.
“The first of his poems are exuberant and descriptions of Ukraine’s landscape and they are written with the idea that music imbues everything.
“Some of the later poems are about Ukraine’s revolution and civil war and deal with the horrors of humanity and the regeneration of the country after these events.”
Steve, who grew up in Crosland Moor but now lives in Longwood, says Ukraine lost more people through genocide than any other country during the 20th century.
The NHS contracts manager said: “I’m Ukrainian and growing up in Huddersfield I was aware that Ukrainians were stigmatised to a degree and this created a reaction in me and I wanted to change that.
“I never really fit in. I always wanted to fit in and we do try and do so and integrate ourselves as much as possible into society.
“But it’s important that people learn about the extent of what Ukraine was subjected to and the death toll of its people.”
In Ukraine the Holodomor, or Hunger plague, was a famine engineered by the Soviet Union.
Between 1932 and 1933 up to 10 million people are thought to have starved to death and a series of mass executions took place.
A lot of gifted writers and poets died at the hands of the Soviet regime. However, Steve said Tychyna survived by writing collections of Soviet doggerel.
Later, Tychyna’s poems focused on revolution and civil war.
Tychyna was often criticised by Ukrainian exiles for praising Communism – but recent research by scholars says his poems contained a subtle mockery of the Communists.
Pavlo Tychyna: The Raspberry’s Eyelash, translated and edited by Steve Komarnyckyj is available for £10.95 fromwww.poetrysalzburg.com
