Philip Nikolayev (Moscow, 1966) was raised bilingually in Russia and Moldova. He has been living in the United States since 1990. His poetry follows divergent forms, in which the broadly meandering poem stands out especially. His work is at times anecdotal and at other times perspicacious and picturesque. Prevalent themes are memories form his time in the Soviet Union and the struggle between trying to find your own way and the feeling of being pre-determined by destiny. He subtly formulates images of the past in which the innocence of a child is confronted with a razor sharp image of a society that knows no place for the individual or the deviant. Like none other, Philip Nikolayev commands the art of exposing major themes in a fleet-footed, playful manner.

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