Sergei Kruglov, a poet, prose writer and Orthodox priest, lives and serves in the town of Minusinsk in the Krasnoyarsk region. He became famous after publishing poetry in the 1990s. In 1999, when he took orders, he stopped releasing his work, but in 2006 he began publishing again.

The poetry written by Kruglov over the past decade has provided one of the most unexpected jolts to the Russian literary scene. Their synthesis of the religious and the avant-garde, the local and the universal, can change how we understand ourselves. The most important element of these poems is the novelty of their worldview, with the poet suspended above any religious or cultural allusions. The “new” Kruglov evokes a world that has come to resemble an unfolding catastrophe, one that requires a careful, even joyful response.