NEW YORK, April 3./TASS/. The funeral of renowned Soviet and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko has been postponed and will take place on April 12. The funeral , family friend Mikhail Morgulis told TASS on Monday.
"Initially we planned the funeral for April 9, but as it is Sunday, and besides a holiday, Palm Sunday, the decision was made to postpone last respects to Zhenya and the funeral until April 12," he explained.
Yevtushenko who, apart from being a poet, was also an essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, and director, was born in 1933 in a township adjoining Zima railway station in the Irkutsk region, eastern Siberia. His father, Alexander Gangnus, was a geologist and amateur poet.
He published his first short poem in the Sovetsky Sport newspaper. His first collection of poetry, 'The Prospectors of the Future' came out of print in 1952 and the Association (Union) of Writers of the USSR extended membership to him in the same year, to make him the youngest member at the time.
Yevtushenko was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1963. All in all, he has authored more than 150, some of them translated into dozens of foreign languages.
He died in the United States on April 1, aged 84.