In a different place and time, Yevgeny Yevtushenko would have needed no introduction.

Now, however, the Russian poet, who in his heyday would recite his verse to audiences of thousands in one night, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature and whose face graced the cover of Time magazine on April 13, 1962, needs introducing to entire generations. It is an introduction worth making.

Yevtushenko is tall, fair, with eyes that speak eloquently as he does. As we sit down for our interview, he apologises for his English, which, he says, he learnt in the Soviet era.

When I meet him, he has just starred in an evening of his poetry – some of which translated and recited in Maltese – which has been held by the Arts Council Malta at the Russian Chapel at San Anton Palace, Attard. Some of his poems were turned into songs by Vince Fabri.

“I have many songs, more than 100 songs, some of them became folk songs, and the best compliment for a poet is when people sing their poems without knowing who wrote them. It’s the best appreciation,” he says.

Having observed him the day before, one thing was clear – words do not lack. I ask him one question – as preliminary as it is crucial – “Who is Yevtushenko?”

The first line of approach is on his work as an anthologist, where, in a time when so-called ‘white’ poets, that is anyone who wasn’t on the ‘red’ side, were interdicted from being published. Once out of Russia, he was the first to publish works from the two sides under one cover.

“They were accused of being enemies of the people by official, dogmatic critics; they would not publish them. Our generation’s interest in all things forbidden was so strong that we were breaking all the taboos.

“We were fighting this, it was not easy; we knew their poetry by heart and we hoped to meet them, physically. My most beloved aphorism is by Emerson, one which was quoted often by Albert Camus: ‘Every wall is a door’.”

One of these doors was that belonging to Georgi Adamovic, who had left Russia at the very beginning of the revolution.

“When we met each other, it was like two sides of a war meeting,” Yevtushenko says. It was a side Yevtushenko was born into, not one he chose, he says.

“I was born red. I didn’t choose it. I never identified myself as a white, but I liked their poetry very much and I was incredibly curious. So I stuffed myself with their poetry. You could be a real great poet only if you were a great reader. I hate war ideology, because ideology is a cage. One step to right – it’s betrayal. One step to the left – it’s betrayal,” he says, animatedly. “That’s why I never was a member of any kind of party.”

When the two poets met, the White poet recited, by heart, the poem Yevtushenko had written of the first time he’d been with a woman.

“She was a widow, her husband was killed and I lied about my age. In Russia, it was forbidden to make love with people with no passport. The passport was given only after someone turned sixteen; I was only 15, so I lied to her.

“She was very religious and when she understood I was an innocent boy, she fell down on the floor, asking God to forgive her for such a sin. And Adamovic recited this poem of mine with tears in his eyes. This man, who was meant to be my enemy,” Yevtushenko says.

This questioning of the authority on what was acceptable and what is most definitely not features heavily in our conversation.

“Adamovic said that it is impossible to have even one piece of work glorifying evil which is at the same time a great piece of art. And he was right. It could be fashionable, for a period of time.

“But great books which survived, like the Bible, Dante, Petrarca, the best of Shakespeare, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky... they never taught evil. The ideals of humanity are much higher than ideology. Ideology, sometimes, kills ideals.”

It was the greatest moment – the Nobel Prize isn’t worth as much as that

He says his generation was “forged by propaganda like little toy soldiers”.

Throughout our conversation, he flits from one topic to another, with everything hinging on a very fine thread.

At the core of this flitting around is a deep sense of humanity, which expresses itself in different ways. He does not apologise for his poetry being sentimental.

“There is over-sweetened, petit bourgeois sentimentalism. This I dislike. But there is sentimentalism when people feel somebody’s pain like their own, you know?

“When I wrote Babi Yar, some people suspected that I was a secret Jew,” he says of his best-loved poem, which earned him a nomination for a Nobel Prize. Then, he talks about football as a way of explaining “aggressive nationalism”. Take Algeria in the last World Cup, he says.

“They played pretty well and they are among the 16 best teams. But why, when celebrating their victory, did 74 people have to be arrested for burning down tyres and being so aggressive? I like football, because I was a very good goalkeeper. I am the only man who wrote good poetry about football,” he says.

He finds it “impossible” that football fans hate their opponents . “It’s like hating your opponents in poetry. I’m an anthologist. I couldn’t hate poets who write like me. I admire people who write like me and I’m very positive about them.”

Football and Yevtushenko have another thing in common – the mass appeal.

“My poetry is very accessible. Everyone gets it, from taxi drivers and workers to the best scientists, like Sakharov. It’s a very difficult task, to try and be understood by everybody. Sometimes I probably explain too much what I want to say, but it’s my kind of poetry.”

His kind of poetry is not merely his. “This is probably my defect or maybe my good point. I’m a bit of a megalomaniac, I need a big audience. I’m a child of crowds,” he says.

“I’m not afraid of crowds. You have to time crowds. An untimed crowd could be dangerous. But if you can unite a crowd by one poem, it’s such a mystery. So I think that the first condition of good poetry is that it has to be confessional, and secondly, it has to be a sermon,” he says.

But it isn’t just his confession that comes through – many of his poems are written as a monologue of different people: “I’m a writer for all those who don’t write.”

He mentions a poem he had written in Siberia, where women had lost their men to large construction projects.

“I wrote a monologue of a Siberian girl, who was very poor, from a village which was called Great Dirt. Her name was Niushka.” He stops to write the name down for me.

“Niushka has many candidates. Many people thought I was writing about them, but it was just a typical image, you know? I wrote about all of them and it was the best moment, the happiest moment of my life, when I recited this poem in a big club for the working class.

“There were 2,000 people inside and outside there were loudspeakers. It was nearly spring but pretty cold, people were out there listening. I was surrounded by 6,000 people, in silence,” he recalls.

At the end of the reading – a four hour affair (“it was a very long poem”) – husbandless mothers, stood up, holding up their children.

“They were telling me that I wrote the poem about them. It was the greatest moment – the Nobel Prize isn’t worth as much as that,” he says.

He turns back to my initial question. “Flaubert said, ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi’. And when Tolstoy was writing Anna Karenina, he felt contractions when Anna was pregnant, do you know about it?” he says. “And I say – Niushka – c’est moi. I am Niushka.”