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 with one another, and everything takes on new shades of magical realism characteristic of the Baltic region. Alongside a growing interest in paganism and other religious practices, literature created by women authors is becoming intensely physical, drawing attention to a wide range of experiences, often including those that are uncomfortable.
Vitalija Maksvytė, a poet, writer, doula, mindfulness teacher, and a mother of four, made her debut with the confessional poetry collection Kvėpuoju (I Am Breathing), which strongly shook the literary community at the time. Even today, she doesn’t abandon her deeply intimate, realistic, and physical voice, which many readers find uncomfortable. In her latest book ne kraujo, ne pieno (more than blood, more than milk), Maksvytė opens up even more, describing her own and other women’s experiences of desire, romantic relationships, violence and abuse, as well as motherhood.
Maksvytė aims to connect these and similar experiences with the histories of different generations or lineages as well as with works considered canonical and with recognized creators such as Birutė Pūkelevičiūtė, Šarūnas Sauka, Sigitas Parulskis, Marina Abramović, Žemaitė, and Sylvia Plath. At the same time, the poetry collection conceptually reinterprets for the present day the myth of Eglė žalčių karalienė (Eglė, Queen of Serpents), which becomes a central axis of the entire book. Although this folk narrative is found in the folklore of Baltic, Finnic, Slavic, and other peoples and has been rewritten, adapted, and variously interpreted across centuries – it has become a particularly significant part of Lithuanian art and identity. For example, one of the most prominent twentieth-century Lithuanian poets, Salomėja Nėris, created a verse fairy-tale poem based on this myth, which may still be one of the best-known adaptations of the story known to this day.
The myth is about a girl named Eglė who marries the serpent king Žilvinas, only for him to be eventually cut down with scythes by her relatives. Their children, who tried calling for their father (“O Žilvinas, dear Žilvinas, if you’re alive – swim to us in milky foam, if dead – swim to us in bloody foam”), are transformed into trees: an oak, an ash, a birch, and a trembling aspen. In the tale, the motifs of milk and blood – symbols of life and death – become central to Maksvytė’s latest book.
Maksvytė transforms the folk text for the present day, emphasizing not only its brutality or the helplessness of Eglė and Drebulė in the face of violence, but also reflecting on the problematic normalization and aestheticization of systemic physical and sexual violence against women in literature and art. Meanwhile, the narrator uses the symbols of blood and milk to define her own identity as well – ambivalent, indeterminate, shaped not only by milk or blood, but also by Eros and Thanatos. The desire to present the multiplicity of the self becomes one of Maksvytė’s central creative aims, which she herself points to when describing her book.
Nevertheless, cultural references are not the main axis of Maksvytė’s poetry. The foundation of her poetic world is instead a bodily everydayness or extreme experiences, which also turn into a form of social critique. As in her first book, the poems in ne kraujo, ne pieno are written in a simple style, not overloaded with poetic devices and at times even resembling colloquial speech. There are elements of autobiography and autofiction, and the boundary between the narrator and Maksvytė herself is extremely thin, although at times there is a somewhat pretentious attempt to speak on behalf of many other women.
Thus, many of the poems in the collection revolve around themes typical of confessional poetry and often avoided in public discourse, such as sexual abuse, violence, desire, and at times the particularly uncomfortable experiences of motherhood that are still considered taboo in society.
It is no surprise that, for these experiences, which are still rare in public discourse and even more so in poetry, yet real and true to life, the collection ne kraujo, ne pieno earned Maksvytė the Jurga Ivanauskaitė Prize. The novel Ragana ir lietus (The Witch and the Rain) by one of the most prominent writers of the Lithuanian independence era, Jurga Ivanauskaitė, was for a time even banned for allegedly failing to meet the nation’s ethical norms, tells the story of a love affair between a laywoman and a priest. This is why the award bearing Ivanauskaitė’s name, granted “for free, open, and courageous artistic expression,” only confirms that Maksvytė, at least within the field of Lithuanian literature, has chosen a bold and nonconformist path. This is especially evident when her poems depict aspects of personal life such as unsuccessful or even humiliating Tinder dates, unfulfilled desire, medical coercion, and the dehumanizing experiences of childbirth.
Most of the poems, such as “In the Petal Skirt-folds,” “for my father,” “A Poem for Two Voices: Me and Sylvia P.,” and “We are Not the Most Important Ones Here,” strive for a therapeutic quality, seeking to empower diverse experiences and emancipate different women, bringing them together in a sense of sisterhood. Perhaps these poems also contain elements of New Age spirituality, inviting the reader to see each individual as deeply unique and sacred. Rather than believing in a single clearly defined, authoritative deity, they gesture toward a universal, unifying energy.
In Maksvytė’s poetry, as is currently characteristic of many other contemporary authors, there is an exploration of the idea of collective, intergenerational trauma, along with various attempts to break cycles passed down from one generation to the next. The minimal language and easily recognizable bodily experiences allow readers to easily identify with the narrator of the poems and perhaps even experience a kind of therapeutic effect.
However, this book also contains a much wider variety of texts, written at different stages of Maksvytė’s life. This is reflected not only thematically but stylistically as well. The most striking are poems such as “Offeror,” in which Maksvytė, in a sense, remains faithful to her Kvėpuoju creative period. Here, the narrator comes across as extremely open – at times even blunt or repulsive – yet undeniably firm and determined. In my view, this is precisely the freedom, strength, and courage for which Maksvytė was awarded the Ivanauskaitė’s Prize.
The poem “Offeror” depicts an irrational greed and selfishness, conveyed through the image of eating a boiled pig’s trotter alone. It becomes a ritual of satisfying personal needs – perhaps not always pleasant, but necessary – sacrilegiously grotesque and described with striking vividness, as if even the letters of the text themselves glistened and dripped with pig fat. These lines are among the strongest examples in the collection, illustrating that the power of poetry lies in feeling and atmosphere, in the images that arise before the reader’s eyes, rather than in abstract statements about life and its hardships.
In conclusion, ne kraujo, ne pieno is an ambitious poetry collection that attempts to encompass the truly broad spectrum of Maksvytė’s creative work. As Maksvytė herself suggests, the book reflects that life consists not only of blood and not only of milk, but of something more – something shaped by bodily experience and resistant to clearly defined boundaries.
Stylistically and thematically diverse, the collection reveals the narrator’s complex and shifting identity, which is deeply human, imperfect, and often uncomfortable in its divergence from societal norms. At the same time, the poems raise much broader questions and bring into poetry the challenges faced by many contemporary women. It stands as a mature testament of the present moment from a distinctly embodied perspective, one that invites us to question not only social norms and limits, but also literature marked by systemic violence and the traditionally male-dominated scope of poetry.
