Waclaw Iwaniuk is one of the major postwar émigré Polish poets; he writes in Polish and English and may be considered a Polish-Canadian poet. In the years following World War II his poetry was known only to a limited circle of the Polish émigré community; in Poland his work was virtually unknown until 1987, when the collection Kartagina i inne wiersze (Carthage and Other Poems) was published by an underground press. The abolition of censorship in Poland in 1989 made it possible for Iwaniuk's works to be published openly there (with three volumes of his poems appearing between 1989 and 1991). Only at the end of the twentieth century has his work begun to gain wide recognition.

Waclaw Iwaniuk was born on 17 December 1915 in Chojny Stare, near Chelm Lubelski, Poland, to Józefina Dyszewska and Szczepan Iwaniuk. While his mother cultivated Iwaniuk's religious beliefs, his father provided...