This paper examines Bohdan Boichuk’s poetry by looking into the role his childhood
memories played in forming his poetic imagination. Displaced by World War II, the
poet displays a unique capacity to transcend his traumatic experiences by engaging in
creative writing. Eyewitnessing war atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis does not destroy
his belief in the healing power of poetry; on the contrary, it makes him appreciate poetry
as the only existentially worthy enterprise. Invoking Gaston Bachelard’s classic work
The Poetics of Reveries: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos, I argue that Boichuk’s
vivid childhood memories, however painful they might be, helped him poetically
recreate and reimagine fateful moments of his migrant life.