Klychkov was born in the village of Dubrovka, Tver Governorate. His father, a local tanner and shoemaker, was an Old Believer, and as such exerted strong influence upon his son and his future writings. Klychkov took part in the 1905 Revolution, was on barricades as a member of the Sergey Konenkov-led fighting druzhina and described his experience in several poems, some of which, published in 1907, received praise from Sergey Gorodetsky and Vikenty Veresayev. His debut poetry collectionPesni came out in 1911; instrumental in the publication was his friend, mentor and occasionally sponsor Modest Chaykovski, with whom three years earlier he made a trip to Italy where he met, among others, Maxim Gorky and Anatoly Lunacharsky. It was followed by Potayonny Sad, another book of fine folklore-based verse, creating a bizarred world of rural fantasy, totally detached from the real world. Klychkov served in Finland during the World War I, the experience which awoken him to the horrors of the real world and changed his mindset, having caused what he later described as a "crisis of the soul which from the very first day of this war has cringed and waned." Part of the New Peasant Poets movement in Russian poetry and close to Nikolai Klyuyev, Sergey Yesenin and Alexey Ganin, Klychkov greeted the October Revolution. In 1918 co-authored, the publishing house Labor Company of the Artists of the Word which published several of his books including Dubravna. Some more poetry collections followed, among them Domasniye Pesni and Gost Chudesny, their major themes being the destruction of Russian traditional culture, the demise of peasantry and the loneliness of a lost wonderer. Klychkov authored three novels, Sakharny Nemets,, Chertukinski Balakir and Knyaz Mira. All of them, "not rich with action, were composed of miscellaneous scenes of the associative nature, where snapshots of reality mix with images from dreams and the world of spirits, featuring a rather talkative peasant as a narrator," according to the Slavist Wolfgang Kasack. As a translator, Klychkov concentrated on Georgian poetry, and is best remembered for his translation of The Knight in the Panther's Skin by Shota Rustaveli. In 1937 Klychkov was arrested by NKVD and accused of being a Lev Kamenev's associate and a member of the anti-Soviet terrorist organization called the Labour Peasant Party. He was executed on 8 October. In the 1990s the documents appeared which seemed to prove that on that day he was just shot dead by an NKVD officer during the interrogation in the Lefortovo Prison. He was cleared of all accusations and rehabilitated in 1956.
