The Unusual Case of Fr. Sergei Kruglov: Poet, Priest, and Postmodernist in Post-Soviet Siberia

The article explores the writing of Fr. Sergei Kruglov (b. 1966), a prominent practitioner of innovative Russian poetry, highlighting a complex evolution he underwent after embracing the Orthodox faith and becoming a priest, while continuing the experimental poetics that characterized his earlier work. Kruglov's writing, frequently in an ekphrastic mode, reflects his background as a resident of a small and remote Siberian city; at the same time, it is suffused with dense cultural allusions and dialogue with Western literature, especially of the Baroque and Modernist eras. Kruglov's writing is discussed in the theoretical contexts of postmodernist discourses on contemporary poetry and religion and socio-political contexts of contemporary Russia.