Mariyka Pidhiryanka

Pidhiryanka was a pen-name, meaning "from under the mountains" and she was born Mariya Omelyanivna Lenert on 29 March 1881, in the village of Bili Oslavy near the town of Nadvirna on the edge of the Carpathian forest, in what was then Austrian Galicia.

She subsequently won a scholarship to a girls' secondary school and in 1900 gained a place at a teacher training academy in L'viv, the provincial capital of eastern Galicia.

The city was the leading centre of Ukrainian literary life and political activism, led by the poet Ivan Franko and his admirers.

Unlike the Russian Empire, Austria allowed publication in the Ukrainian language and Pidhiryanka's first collection of poetry appeared in L'viv in 1908.

Ukrainians were suspected of pro-Russian sympathies and the family was placed in civilian internment camps in Transcarpathia (then part of Hungary) and in Austria.

After Austria-Hungary collapsed, Pidhiryanka remained in exile across the Carpathians from war-torn Galicia, where the West Ukrainian People's Republic was defeated by the Poles, who then fought off the Bolsheviks and annexed the territory.

In 1927, she lost her job as a result of a Czech government campaign against Ukrainian schools and the following year she returned to Galicia in search of work.

Where leaves are lost In windblown frost, In graveside prayers When hope despairs… No words resound, No songs are sung, No dreams spun Not one.

Коли я в ніч темнісеньку у сяйві мрій Співала першу пісеньку Землі своїй.

Her official status allowed the publication in L'viv of a collection of her children's poetry, shortly before her death at the age of 82 on 20 May 1963 but republication of her adult work had to wait for Mikhail Gorbachev and glasnost.

After Ukrainian independence Pidhiryanka was included in a collection of Transcarpathian poetry and her children's work remains popular in 21st century Ukraine.