Photo by Algimantas Aleksandravičius

The poet and translator Vladas Braziūnas (b. 1952) wrote his first book of poetry in 1977 but it lay neglected in the publishing house for seven years because ideological censors regarded it as “artistically and ideologically immature”. His collection of poems was finally published in 1983 and received the most prestigious prize for a debut in poetry. In 2013 Braziūnas was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize for culture and art. His work has been translated and published in more than twenty languages. He himself translates from Belarusian, French, Latvian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and several other languages. 

Braziūnas’s works combine archaism and avant-garde linguistic experiments. The poems aim to touch the essence of language and the origins of existence. There are a number of references to Baltic myths, fairy tales and sagas. The author likes to play with archaic word forms and invent archaic-sounding neologisms, making the poems sound much like ancient spells or shamanic incantations. 

His latest collection of poems, Lėtojo laiko aky (In the Eye of Slow Time, 2016), just like his earlier works, contains a number of allusions to mythology and the synthesis of historical and mythical time. The poet aims to immerse himself in the “eye of slow time” – the very beginning, the source of everything.

Selected translations

Polish: Stół góra ołtarna. Translated by Agnieszka Rembiałkowska. Krasnogruda: Pogranicze, 2018

Italian: E ramosa ci accerchierà la sera. Translated by Pietro U. Dini. Novi Ligure: Edizioni Joker, 2013

Romanian: Poezii = Eilėraščiai. Translated by Leo Butnaru, Ruxandra Cesereanu şi Alexandru Matei, Dumitru M. Ion şi Carolina Ilica, Irina Nechit. Luxembourg, 2013

French: Grandes sont les nuits. Translated by Genovaitė Dručkutė, Asta Uosytė-Būčienė, Marc Fontana. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007

Slovakian: veľke sú noci = grandes sont les nuits = naktys yra didelės. Translated by Albert Marenčin, Jozef Mihalkovič, Stanislav Vallo. Bratislava: Edícia Viachlasne Literárne informačné centrum, 2006

Bulgarian: Поезия. Translated by Aksinia Michaylova. Sofia: Нов Златорог, 2005

Translations on-line: www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/vladas-braziunas