Born near the town
Abasha, he was educated at the
Kutaisi Realschule and
Tbilisi State University from which he graduated in 1922. As a teenager, he was associated with the
Blue Horns, a group of young Georgian Symbolists. Although he stood far from any “
proletarian” thematic, he joined the nascent "Left" poets and became their spokesman. In 1924, was arrested and nearly shot on a walking-tour to
Kakheti during the
Red Terror that followed the
Georgian rebellion against the
Soviet rule. Between 1924 and 1929, he produced two series of poems (ფიქრები მტკვრის პირას ["The Thought at the
Mtkvari"], 1925; მხოლოდ ლექსები ["Only Poems"], 1930) that earned him a reputation of one of the most original Georgian poets of the 20th century. In the words of modern British scholar
Donald Rayfield, "most are energetic and provocative
Whitmanesque heckling and satirising of the older generation of poets: Chikovani sported
Mayakovsky’s mantle." Since 1924, he edited the notorious Futurist journal
H2SO4 and directed his attacks against his former associates from the Blue Horns group, chiefly
Titsian Tabidze and
Paolo Iashvili. ==Later years and turn to politics==