Timur Kibirov, among the most influential of contemporary Russian poets, was born in 1955 and began publishing his poems in the late 1980s. Critics often identify his work with postmodernism and conceptualism. Kibirov is the author of thirteen books of poetry, including When Lenin Was Young (1995), In Memoriam Derzhavin (1996), Amour, exil (2000), Kara-Baras (2006), and In the Margins of "A Shropshire Lad" (2007). The poems translated for Cardinal Points come from his most recent collection, Greek and Roman Catholic Songs and Nursery Rhymes (2009). Kibirov has won many honors, including the "Anti-Booker" award (1997) and Russia's prestigious "Poet" prize (2008). In 2010, Kibirov published his first novel, Lada, or Bliss: A Chronicle of True and Happy Love, for which he won the Znamya award. English translations of his poems have appeared in Third Wave: The New Russian Poetry (Johnson & Ashby, 1992) and Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology (Kates & Bunimovich, 2008). In a 2008 interview, Kibirov said, "The only thing that a poet needs to do is write good poems. What this means, I can't begin to judge; no one can know this, there are no criteria… And whether a poet uses Old Church Slavonic or the current slang is simply a matter of technique."