Sometimes poets are criticized for always writing the same book, but that certainly does not apply to Giedrė Kazlauskaitė. As you read her work, an unusual impression emerges – a single person’s life seems endless and multilayered. Her fifth book, Marialė (Cantus Mariales), confirms this once again.
Each of Kazlauskaitė’s books conceptually reveal a different aspect of her biography. This time she employs the term Cantus Mariales, which refers to a literary genre that records testimonies about miracles performed by images of the Virgin Mary. With this image, Kazlauskaitė offers an original description of psychoanalysis (which led her to poetry) and speaks of two important personal experiences: her own battle with the oncological illness and the acceptance of her psychotherapist’s death. By indirectly elevating the role of the deceased to that of a “grace-bestowing” figure, Kazlauskaitė allows loss to be understood not as the end of a bond, but as the emergence of a new form of it. Mourning intensifies the relationship and encourages the crossing of professional boundaries, making the bond more intimate. Such intellectual connections are a significant aspect of Kazlauskaitė’s work. Her poems create an atmosphere of refined play and suggest new ways of interpreting life.
This concept reveals itself in the cycle Kūnas yra mano laikraštis (The body is my news), presented to the readers of Vilnius Review. It consists of 12 poems, written month by month, seemingly with little editing, more in the spirit of a play than of planning. Considering the structure of the cycle, it resembles a collage of various narrative strands pieced together. For example, her relationship with her parents and with her own body, the bitter routine of cultural work (Kazlauskaitė was a longtime editor of the Šiaurės Atėnai journal), and driving lessons. Everything is bound together by a strong evaluative voice and the aforementioned circumstances – illness and mourning. Kazlauskaitė’s poems are not narrative but closer to essays and therefore difficult to retell. Provocative thinking becomes the core of her poems: “Consumption is not to my liking. / But I’m also not a fan of poverty.” (from the poem “Sausis” [January]); “Our books are a myth. / Nobody needs them but us.” (from the poem “Vasaris” [February]). Such statements create the intellectual tension characteristic of Kazlauskaitė’s poetry.
In her poetry, Kazlauskaitė reveals that she doesn’t feel “like everyone else.” For nearly a decade now, her public statements, essays, and cultural commentary have stood out for being controversial. For example, she said, “I am not a traditional woman who suffers from an identity-crisis-induced depression, who has no ethical version of motherhood.” She even claimed that her identity as a poet is temporary. Such declarations can be interpreted in various ways – perhaps as arrogance or posturing – but they are meant to challenge stereotypes, especially the belief that writing poetry is a noble pursuit. Kazlauskaitė deliberately avoids presenting “the best version of herself” to the public or becoming the voice of the crowd addressing socially urgent themes. On the contrary, she invites us to consider whether artists may be trying too hard to please their audiences.
Such attitude is characteristic of her generation of individualist poets (Agnė Žagrakalytė, Marius Burokas), who came of age after Lithuania regained independence. This generation witnessed the collapse of totalitarianism, the rapid introduction of capitalism, the shifting role of culture in society, and the way social media changed the notion of authority. Despite these factors, these poets remained playful, ironic, and distinctive. Kazlauskaitė’s view of the changes in society is the most radical, as her hybrid poetic form openly demonstrates that literature has lost its classical, grand, and elevated style, becoming more personal and even more vulgar, resembling a stream of essays whose central figure is the evaluating “I.” The inner structure of her work resists all of this and strives for intellectual tension. Reading Kazlauskaitė’s texts, we encounter various ideas and themes, but never banality, unless it is presented as a playful pastiche. Even if it is difficult to relate to such challenging writers as Kazlauskaitė and her peers, it is fascinating to enter their point of view because it is the independent voices that stir culture and breathe life into it.
Another important idea in Kazlauskaitė’s poetry is that even in the most personal examples of her writing, only fragments of a person’s experiences appear and not the “real person” herself. Kazlauskaitė is the multivoiced narrator capable of speaking from different perspectives: as an impoverished cultural worker, a homosexual mother, a questioning Catholic, a philologist who never wrote her dissertation on a priest-poet. Yet she never strips herself completely bare, nor does she attempt to speak in all voices at once. Still, it is easy to notice that the individual experience she includes in her poetry does not align with an average person and Kazlauskaitė views her identity as problematic and unresolved (“I am a night bird and a harmful / product of psychoanalysis”). Here Kazlauskaitė reveals that deviation from the norm becomes valuable only when empowered, meaning shown “from within.” This is why the evaluative voice and her creation of unusual insights are so crucial to her poetry. After all, a woman’s sense of well-being in a patriarchal world or the gaze of a homosexual mother upon reality are not dominant perspectives. Such a fragmented identity polemicizes with the notion of the norm and allows the reader to rethink its criteria.
In Marialė, Kazlauskaitė reveals that writing poetry is similar to therapy. Yet she seems to treat the creative process not as a healing based on a diagnosis, but as a strengthening of individuality and resilience. This is reflected in the polemical type of her poems, when the aim of writing is to argue instead of unburdening the self. This is why such work requires an addressee or an opponent. In Marialė, the narrator often addresses the deceased, who assumes several roles: psychotherapist, close companion, perhaps even confessor. Another important element becomes the bond with her growing daughter, who expresses her independence and the thought process of a different generation. The absence of being able to intuitively sense norms exposes the narrator’s own limited thoughts, differences in mentality, and shifts in lifestyle. At the same time, this prevents her relationship with her child from being understood narrowly – the daughter could be a source of comfort, a teacher, or a punisher depending on circumstances. Maybe this is why, in reading Marialė, I encounter a life with infinite meaning.
I believe that such original poetry can be created by poets who are able to withstand the current of collective thinking and do not appear broken by personal tensions. Poets whose personalities form in a democratic society, who hear the discourses circulating in it, also perceive their contradictions and are capable of responding to them. In this case, it means staying within the province of a certain kind of avant-garde: living in similar “social bubbles” but not becoming one with the surroundings, instead, observing them from the side.
Kazlauskaitė chose an independent path early on. She turned away from the academic canon of poetry and began writing without romanticism. When Lithuanian poetry lacked social critique, she spoke openly about psychotherapy and homosexuality. Today, many of these themes have been taken up by other poets, and Lithuanian poetry is becoming more socially engaged and sensitive. Kazlauskaitė seeks to stand out from the crowd, calling her writing “journalistic” and once again experimenting with rhyme. Just like a typical avant-gardist, she is able to appropriate influences even before they become mainstream.
It is gratifying that Kazlauskaitė’s work has become a phenomenon that holds an important place in Lithuanian poetry. In 2025, Marialė earned her the Jotvingian Prize – one of the most prestigious literary awards in Lithuania. The book testifies to Kazlauskaitė’s maturity as well as to contemporary poetry’s power to unite the intimate and the social dimensions.
