Bakhyt Shkurullaevich Kenzheyev - a Russian poet of Kazakh descent was born on 2 August, 1950 in Shymkent, Kazakhstan.
In 1953 his parents moved to Moscow. He graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University with a degree in chemistry.
In 1975 he was a founding member of the "Moscow Time" group of poets, with Alexei Tsvetkov, Alexander Soprovsky, and Sergey Gandlevsky.
He appeared at the 2006 Blue Metropolis Montreal festival. He lives in Montreal, New York City, and Moscow.
In 2003 he was awarded Moscow-Transit Poetry Prize
English Translations
"Rain Pours Down in Rome, Repeating", West Branch, J. Kayes, Bucknell University
Slava Muchnick, ed. (September 7, 2009). Salt Crystals on an Axe: Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry in Congruent Translation: A Bilingual Mini-Anthology. Translator Alex Shafarenko. Ancient Purple Translations.
Among Russian poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Bakhyt Kenzheev enjoys a reputation as a traditionalist. Predominantly lyrical, his verse touches upon a wide range of modern phenomena. He is renowned for his ability to represent mundane life in an intensely Romantic style, creating a mystical dimension to human existence.
Many critics acknowledge that his poetry incorporates the European and Central Asian mythological traditions as well as specifically Russian literary trends. Projecting traditional imagery on the minutiae of contemporary life, Kenzheev's poetry harks back to the Russian rhyming styles most brilliantly represented by figures such as Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok, and Osip Emil'evich Mandel'shtam. Poet and critic Efim Bershin in his review (Literaturnaia gazeta [The Literary Gazette], 1993) of Kenzheev's book Stikhotvoreniia poslednikh let (Poetry of Recent Years, 1992) confesses, «I like Kenzheev's poetry because it elevates you from mundane life and vanity…»
