Photo by Monika Požerskytė

Giedrė Kazlauskaitė (b. 1980) is a poet, prose writer, essayist, literary critic and editor of the literary journal Šiaurės Atėnai. She obtained a degree in Lithuanian philology from Vilnius University. Her debut was a collection of short stories Sudie, mokykla (Goodbye, School) in 2001. But it is Kazlauskaitė’s poetry that has earned her the greatest acclaim. Her collection of poems Meninos (2014) was a turning point in Lithuanian poetry: Kazlauskaitė’s confessional style was saturated with autobiographical elements and concerned with both societal and personal themes. Kazlauskaitė’s poetry has been translated into English, French, Polish and other languages. 

At the moment, Kazlauskaitė is one of the most striking and influential figures in Lithuanian literature. The writer and critic is distinguished by her openness: in her poetry she brings to life the inner drama and comedy of a woman writer, a mother, a lesbian, and a young researcher with an unwritten thesis (she was a doctoral student at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore). A prose-like unhurried telling is characteristic of her poems, where pathos is avoided but there is an abundance of cultural signifiers, literary allusions and irony. Existence is not a speculative abstract category but rather the overpowering experiences unfolding in ordinary daily life (or in the innate sedentariness of human nature, in her own words) and its routine. 

Her latest collection, Gintaro kambarys (The Amber Room, 2018), explores a relationship with a father – an autobiographical, cultural, symbolic and metaphysical one. The title of the book is equivocal: the Amber Room is at the same time the room that belongs to the writer’s father, who appears in many of her poems as a character, the room made of amber for King Frederick William I that disappeared during World War II, a little therapy room, and the underwater amber palace where Jūratė, the Lithuanian goddess of the sea, resides, as described in a popular fairy tale. The characteristic quality of this collection is the author’s ability to connect personal and biographical stories with the cultural context, thus talking about universal and widespread things through personal, intimate experiences. 

Selected translations

English: How the Earth Carries Us. New Lithuanian Poets. Selected and translated by Rimas Užgiris, Marius Burokas and others. – Vilnius: Lithuanian Culture Institute, 2015

French: Coeurs ébouillantés, dix-sept poétes lituaniennes contemoraines / Nuplikytom širdim, septyniolika šiuolaikinių lietuvių poečių. Translated by Diana Sakalauskaitė et Nicole Barriére. – Paris: L‘Harmattan, 2012

Translations on-line: www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/giedr-kazlauskait