We Have Been Waiting for You I grew up with one mother and two grandparents. I grew up with a grandfather who told me the sea was the only border I could trust, who told me the people who stay behind die or hide and about the pyramid dunes he ran across as a child.
negative and positive negative, you’re always negative angry grunts from every which way but dip me in the lord’s developer and my true form will become apparent nida. sun the afternoon sun against my face the north wind against my back the sun checks my moles the wind checks my spine nida. can(nots)
Laima Vincė Sruoginis was born in 1966 in Teaneck, NJ. She happens to be the granddaughter of Anicetas Simutis, the long-time Lithuanian consul general for the United States, who served Lithuania as a diplomat for 65 years throughout the years of the Soviet occupation and who also became Lithuania’s first ambassador to the United Nations.
Laima Vincė Sruoginis: On Empathy, Belonging, and Looking In from the Outside Read More »
In the spring of 2020, my mother Vida and the other residents of her Toronto nursing home were sitting ducks when the virus arrived. Close living quarters and daily, intimate contact with dozens of caregivers put everyone at risk for contagion. We didn’t understand exactly how the new virus was
ALINA 1946 I’m no partisan. Quite the opposite – I’m afraid of a lot of things. I avoid looking directly into a dog’s eyes, never mind standing around gawking at fights or drunks brawling. I try to be as distant as I can from things. I wander around on the edge of forests and only
Vytautas V. Landsbergis Read More »
Exercising the Heart Every morning, I tread the elliptical trainer: a little bit of geometry, a little bit of the laws of literature, and of course, gravitation, ontology, everything I see, everything I feel, affects me while I tread the elliptical trainer there, far off on the hill, stands the Missionary Monastery and the Church
In Lithuanian literature, as in probably many Central and Eastern European countries, there is a strong interest in local mythology and in reimagining various elements of folklore. In both fiction and poetry, motifs from folk songs, tales, and incantations are being revived and made relevant to the present day. In these works Baltic deities interact
Portrait of a lady with more than blood, more than milk Read More »
passing by and he swallowed a nail and they nailed silence to his stomach he could puke on demand this was his sole distinguishing mark which betrayed to us the clay he was made of he was later nailed for a second and third year to that same place to that same grade after the
Mantas Balakauskas Read More »
We are living in a time marked by a pervasive sense of looming catastrophe – of an approaching end of the world. Yet this feeling is hardly new in Lithuanian literature. From the interwar poetry of Jonas Aistis, who evoked the image of a “dying Europe,” to Tomas Venclova’s visions of forgotten utopian enclaves in
What if It Never Ends? Read More »
Acceptance Speech for the Most Creative Book of the Year, 2025 given by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore First, I am grateful to the community of literary scholars and writers (who are so closely intertwined in our country that, I think, I will not be mistaken in addressing you in this way)
Poetry Needs Resistance: The Resistance of the World Read More »
