GENRIKH SAPGIR, born in 1928, was a member of the famous Lianozovo group which, in the 1960s and 1970s, brought together such dissident poets and artists as Brodsky, Zverev, Ilya Kabakov, Oscar Rabin and Ernst Neizvestny. Sapgir has been writing poetry since he was 14, but under the Soviets his "adult" poems were hardly ever published. Like his predecessor Daniel Kharms and other absurdists before him, he made a very successful career writing for children. To break through to his readers he started writing his poems on shirts which he exhibited at art exhibitions together with his artist friends' paintings. These "sonnets on shirts" have remained popular to this day. A recipient of the Khiebnikov and Znamya awards, he is widely published and immensely popular in Russia today. Several collections of his poetry have appeared in France and Germany, and his poems have been a constant feature of the Russian-language emigre journals. Sapgir also writes short stories, plays and film scripts. He has eight poetry collections to his credit and his poetry can also be found in the major literary journals: Znamya, No.1, 1996 and No.10, 1993; Oktyabr, No.6, 1995 and No.10, 1992; SOLO, No.10; Golden Age, No.5; Druzhba Narodov, No.8, 1993 and others. His poetry is marked with the "wisdom of humor and anecdote" (Andrei Bitov), and although thoroughly original, is reminiscent of the Futurists, Velemir Khiebnikov and the OBERIU. He was singled out by Akhmatova as one of the more talented poets of his generation. "Sapgir is a very talented poet noted, above all, for his ingenious use of all the possibilities inherent in the Russian language, daring imagery, meta-metaphorism, conversion of material categories into spiritual ones, juxtaposition of contrasting information series. His original ideas provide a powerful stimulus to the reader's imagination."