NEO-AVANT-GARDE TENDENCIES IN LATE 20TH CENTURY UKRAINIAN POETRY

Abstract

This paper investigates how neo-avant-garde tendencies shaped Ukrainian poetry of the 1980s–1990s, focusing on experimental aesthetics and the creative reworking of avant-garde traditions by groups like Bu-Ba-Bu, LuHoSad, and Red Wagon. The study demonstrates how these collectives creatively reworked the legacy of the historical avant-garde through irony, parody, intermedial experimentation, and a deliberate rejection of canonical forms. Drawing on theoretical debates surrounding the neo-avant-garde (Bürger, Foster, Silverberg), the paper situates Ukrainian developments within broader global contexts while foregrounding their unique cultural and political specificity.The group Bu-Ba-Bu challenged nationalistic clichés and socialist-realist literary norms by employing grotesque humor, linguistic play, and performative poetics. LuHoSad, rejecting the notion of a literary vanguard, identified instead as a “rearguard” drawing on the entire tradition of world literature and baroque formalism, integrating visual poetry and performance into their work. Red Wagon, centered in Kharkiv, fused neofuturist language with post-Soviet existentialism, as exemplified in the early works of Serhiy Zhadan. These poets depicted fragmented realities, technological metaphors, and the search for spiritual meaning in a collapsing ideological landscape.By synthesizing innovation with tradition, and subversion with play, these neo-avantgarde movements reshaped the trajectory of contemporary Ukrainian poetry. The study argues that their conscious engagement with historical and aesthetic precedents – particularly the Ukrainian baroque and futurism – enabled a dynamic reimagining of poetic form and identity in late 20th-century Ukraine.