Born in Frýdek, Austrian Silesia, within Austria-Hungary, Goj began writing his poems around 1926, eventually making a name for himself in the 1930s shortly after adopting the Łysohorsky pseudonym.
Upon German occupation, he fled to Poland, where he joined a Czechoslovak military force shortly before the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
While in Moscow his works first gained widespread recognition and were translated into Russian by several influential writers, including Boris Pasternak.
Frustrated by all successful attempts to block his accession of any academic posts offered to him, he appealed directly to Joseph Stalin via his Russian peers and was thus able to secure a teaching position and fellowship in local literary associations.
Nonetheless, over the course of decades following the war, a steady stream of Łysohorsky's work began to be translated and published abroad, such as an English release, Selected Poems (1970, ed.