Myron Lysenko was born of Ukrainian parents who arrived at Bonegilla from near Lvov after World War II. He completed his education at St Paul's Primary School and Newlands High School in Coburg, Melbourne. Following this Lysenko worked at various jobs ranging from stage hand for the Australian Ballet and set hand with Crawford Productions to landscape gardener and factory hand.
In the early 1980s Lysenko co-wrote two plays, 'I'll Do Anything' and 'Dialogue with Typewriters', that were performed by The Plaster Cast in Melbourne in 1984. In the same year he began conducting writing workshops in Pentridge Gaol. He has continued to offer such workshops in schools, libraries and community centres. In late 1986 Lysenko took eighteen months off work from his job with Telecom in order to concentrate fully on his writing. He moved to Captain's Flat, New South Wales, where he completed his first collection of poetry, Coughing with Confidence (1988).
In 1989 Lysenko was writer-in-residence at Cleeland High School in Dandenong. During that year he wrote that his poetry was 'concerned with self-destructive urges of a young generation, trapped within the menace and tensions of living thru the late 1980s. The poems are topped with humour and self-mockery' (La Mama Poetica, 1989).
Lysenko has been a member of the Victorian Writers Centre, the New South Wales Poets Union, the Fellowship of Australian Writers (Canberra branch), PEN International, the Multicultural Arts Organisation and the Fringe Network. His work has been read on radio stations 3CR, 3RRR, 3EA, 2CN, 2XX, 2SER, ABC National and 5UV and as a performance poet he has read many times at events such as La Mama Poetica, Harold Park Hotel, Sydney, the Spoleto Festivals, the Picollo Spoleto Festivals, Adelaide Writers' Weeks, the Tasmanian Poetry Festival and at Montsalvat.
A poet, short story writer, dramatist and editor, Lysenko was also co-founder and co-editor (with Kevin Brophy) of Going Down Swinging and he has been a co-director of the Montsalvat National Poetry Festival.
