Gospodin Litvinovich finds life's work in poetry

He could have become a researcher and teacher. But life took a different turn. Today, Sergei Thomson, known as Gospodin Litvinovich, lives and earns a living through poetry, which is quite surprising. He performs in halls, at festivals, in small clubs and large theaters.

This text tells the unusual path of an unusual person. It is the story of how a biologist can become a poet.

One of Russia«s most famous reciters will hold a poetry meeting titled «Infinitely Beloved» (12+) in Chita during the «Zabaikalskaya Osen» festival. The meeting will take place on October 25 at 18:30 in the «Rodina» concert hall. Tickets are already on sale, but two lucky subscribers of the «Chita.Ru» Telegram channel will receive tickets for free.

At the creative meeting, Gospodin Litvinovich will read poems sharply, sincerely, with full openness. The event in Chita is expected to be not just a poetry reading, but an encounter with poetry that evokes strong feelings, memories, and a desire to find answers. The evening is intended for those who seek in poetry not entertainment, but deep experience, who understand the power of sincere words and are ready to open up to genuine emotions.

Leaving lizards behind for poetry

Sergei has a total of four surnames. His real one is Patrakov, but he admits he never felt any connection to it. So, he replaced it with his stepfather«s surname—Thomson. Later, on LiveJournal, the persona of Seryozha Parokhodov was born, and eventually, the name Gospodin Litvinovich appeared by chance—during a game of «Mafia» in St. Petersburg, when he and his friend, poet Vlada Litvinovich, exchanged surnames.

He first took notice of poetry in school, in the sixth grade, when poems suddenly brought him to tears; he felt them deeply but did not seriously engage with them. He himself says that until age 25, he did not enjoy reading, but some texts affected him so sharply that emotions overflowed.

He admits that modern poetry was a revelation for a long time. Until 2018, Sergei thought that besides Vera Polozkova, no one else existed. But when he discovered the vast layer of contemporary authors, he felt ecstasy.

During his student years, Sergei enrolled in a theater studio, where he first tried himself on stage. There, he received his initial training in diction and stage speech.

The path to this stage was long and winding. Initially, Sergei pursued science, graduating from the Biology and Soil Faculty of Tomsk State University, spent nine years in biology, wrote a dissertation on lizards, but during the pre-defense, he realized it was not for him.

An expedition to the North brought him his first serious salary, with which he bought a camera. Thus, photography entered his life, and he abandoned biology.

At first, he photographed documents in a photo center, then worked in studios, became a member of the Union of Photo Artists of Russia (and later was expelled for non-payment of dues). He lived off this work for ten years, engaged in photography under the brand Parohodov Photography, until he realized he had stalled and not reached his potential. Then, unexpectedly, he left for Georgia—to work as a toastmaster at weddings. He lived in Tbilisi for six months, and when the season ended, returned to Tomsk and began searching for a new occupation.

The answer came by chance—with a recitation competition where he had to record a video of a favorite poem. He did not win, but felt a response. Then authors started approaching him, asking him to read their texts—and here he understood he had finally found himself.

Reaching a wide audience did not happen immediately. For a long time, Sergei recorded videos for himself, tried reading on camera. Real recognition came only a couple of years ago, when he started posting clips on YouTube and Instagram* (banned in Russia).

True fame arrived in 2021, when he read Tatyana Morina«s poem «You Are the Sea». The video went viral in a day and brought hundreds of thousands of subscribers; now it has over 700,000 views. In one day, he gained 200,000 subscribers on Instagram*, and a couple of weeks later, in Tomsk, tickets for his first concert were sold out.

His main audience became women—«because they feel poetry more than men,» he says himself.

His first concert before a live audience took place in 2019 in his hometown of Tomsk. A week later—already Moscow and St. Petersburg. He recalls: there was no fear, only one worry—that no one would come. But people came, and it became a happiness.

Now he has developed social media where he reads poems on video. Some of his clips garner over half a million views. His audience on Instagram* is 238,000 subscribers, on YouTube—over 50,000, and on VKontakte—37,000.

Now he gives his concerts, records podcasts, and also leads his own author«s course on expressive poetry reading.

Life for contemporary authors

Litvinovich says that his mission is to «bring little-known, wonderful poets into the light.»

Sergei even offers a service where anyone can send their poems to his email. If he likes the work, he will read it in one of his videos, and there is a guaranteed option for a fee. He does not seek big names—he prefers small authors, those who write simply but honestly.

Litvinovich himself does not write poems. He calls himself not a poet, but a reciter, and emphasizes: he does not declaim, but speaks with poems—simply, as in life, and this manner wins over with its naturalness. He reads only what is close to him and what he feels and understands himself. This also affects expressiveness. Sergei admits that poems live in him constantly: «For any manifestation of life, a line surfaces in me.»

«Everything wounds me». Rules of life for a reciter

He speaks calmly about his popularity. Fame came suddenly and became a test. «When thousands of people suddenly come to you, you realize you are not ready,» he admits. Along with attention, responsibility grew.

He himself admits: «Everything wounds me. But I know how to laugh at it—and that saves me». When reading poems, he can even break into tears.

He does not hide it: his self-esteem is low, criticism knocks him off course, and he needs praise. But even in this—there is honesty that makes him alive and close to listeners.

He speaks openly about fears. He fears poverty and the death of loved ones. His own—no. As he notes in an interview, he has that «creative craving for self-destruction,» which only his son holds him back from, about whom he speaks with tenderness, almost reverently, in his interviews.

«If it weren«t for the child, I would have either drunk myself to death or become a drug addict,» he says calmly.

The perfect day for Gospodin Litvinovich begins with the sun—if the day is sunny, everything else is secondary: no matter what happens, it will still be a joy. Sergei loves to relax among close ones and friends, often in nature. Alone, he admits, he does not know how to relax—he starts «intellectually laboring.»

And happiness for him—is a moment. Not in the past and not in the future, but here, when close ones are nearby, when a child«s voice is heard or a conversation that means something is happening.

He speaks briefly about love: «Love—is a verb.» After his divorce, he did not believe he could love again. But he met his current wife Alisa, and everything changed.

When asked why he reads poems, he answers simply: «To heal people with words.»

Speaking of his scientific past, he notes that biology taught him to see life in everything, even in words. Only now he studies the world not under a microscope, but through breath and intonation.

«Zabaikalskaya Osen» began on September 12, events will continue until October 31. The information partner of the «Zabaikalskaya Osen—2025» festival is the online publication «Chita.Ru». The general partner of the festival is the company «Udokanskaya Med».

*Instagram is an extremist organization, its activities are prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.