Zurab Rtveliashvili was born in Kazakhstan in 1967 but grew up in the Georgian capital Tbilisi. He began writing poetry in Georgian already at the age of nine and took later a degree in jurisprudence before his dadaist tendencies had to take the upper hand in the 1990s.
His civil disobedience texts acted in 2003 both the starting point and leader of the pacifist “Rose Revolution” in Georgia. In the following years he was continuously arrested for his performances as well as serving a shorter prison sentence as a prisoner of conscience. The European Court in 2012 ruled against the state of Georgia for violating human rights on a number of points against Zurab Rtveliashvili.
 
 
As a poet he is, however, still banned. Poetry’s dictatorship, which would be his fourth collection of poems, was in 2010 ready for printing at a publishing company in Georgia, but was stopped by the authorities.
 
Zurab Rtveliashvili has since 2009 living in Stockholm.