As an eighteen-year-old he took part in the battle of Zedavela, which resulted in the defeat of King Vakhtang VI of Kartli at the hands of Ottoman army, Dagestani clansmen and renegade Georgians that plunged Georgia into complete anarchy.

In 1727/8 Guramishvili was snatched from his bride by the marauding tribesmen from Dagestan and spent several months in captivity before he managed to escape and make his way on foot to the north.

Following the king's death in 1737, his nobles, including Guramishvili, pledged their loyalty to the Russian crown and joined the Imperial army, forming a Georgian Hussar Regiment.

The most vernal and pastoral of his poems, Katsvia the Shepherd (ქაცვია მწყემსი) is a surreal idyll in which the poet narrates family life of the Georgian mountains and imagines the Eden Georgia without war, corruption, and natural calamity.

In 1787, at the age of 82, Guramishvili accidentally met the Georgian prince Mirian, sent by his father King Heraclius II of Georgia on a diplomatic mission to Russia.