Born in the village of Koshtugi in Olonets Governorate (now Vologda Oblast) near the town of Vytegra, Kluyev rose to prominence in the early twentieth century as the leader of the so-called "peasant poets".

Klyuev was homosexual and had love affairs in Vytegra in the immediate post-revolutionary years, and before settling in Saint Petersburg in the 1920s.

By the 1930s a more romanticized form of homosexual love is found addressed in the poems to Kravchenko.

However, documentary evidence remains scarce; as some suggest, one of the reasons is that scholars in Russia working on archival material have tended to treat issues of sexuality with some caution ; and homosexuality remains a taboo subject for Russian readers and students.

[2] Kluyev, whose work is thoroughly inspired by the spirit of the Old Believers, was the first in Russian literature who began to praise the innocence of the body.