Yevgeny Rein

Yevgeny Rein

Yevgeny Borisovich Rein (Russian: Евге́ний Бори́сович Рейн; born December 29, 1935, in Leningrad) is a Russian poet and writer. His poetry won the State Prize of Russia (1997), Pushkin Prize of Russia, Tsarskoe Selo Art Prize (1997), and the Poet Prize (2012).

In 1960s, along with Joseph Brodsky, Dmitri Bobyshev, and Anatoly Naiman, he was one of the Akhmatova's Orphans, a well-known poetic group from Leningrad. Since 1979 Rein participated in the publication of "Metropol" almanac. His poems were published in samizdat and Soviet underground papers.

His first book was published in 1984 (The Names of Bridges) after a "careful" censorship. A well-known poet and free-thinker, the elder friend of Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Dovlatov, he became a member of Russian Writer's Union only in 1987, during the perestroika.

Rein now lives in Moscow.