Prominent Kazakh-Russian Poet Bakhyt Kenzheev Dies In New York Aged 73

One of the most influential Russian poets, Bakhyt Kenzheev, died in New York at the age of 73, his colleagues wrote on social media on June 26. The cause of death was not given. Born in Kazakhstan's southern city of Shymkent in 1950, Kenzheev grew up in Moscow and in the early 1970s, amid heavy Soviet censorship, co-founded the Moscow Time underground poetry group along with other noted poets -- Aleksei Tsvetkov, Aleksandr Soprovsky, and Sergei Gandlevsky. In 1982, Kenzheev emigrated to Canada. He moved to New York in 2008. He wrote dozens of books of poems and novels. Kenzheev was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. To read the original story by RFE/RL's Russian Service, click here.