Photo by Algimantas Aleksandravičius

The poet and prose writer Agnė Žagrakalytė (b. 1979) made her debut with a collection of poems Išteku (I’m Getting Married, 2003). By participating in literature readings and presenting her works in culture magazines, she earned recognition as a writer even before her first book was published. She obtained a degree in Lithuanian Language and Literature from the Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences in 2001 and has edited youth and culture publications. Since she moved to Brussels with her family, she has been a full-time mother and writer. She is the author of four poetry books and two novels. 

The woman of Žagrakalytė’s poems is a very sensual, voluptuous creature who experiences her environment very intensely. She’s competitive towards other women and playfully savage towards men. The poems are exceptionally, nervously playful, sensual and emotional. The playfulness is revealed through an associative, seemingly alogical way of constructing the texts, a focus on the comic book genre, and an ironic approach towards the traditional role of the poet and poetry itself. 

Femininity is a very important topic in Žagrakalytė’s first collection, I’m Getting Married. Folklore motifs are ironically interpreted to analyse the relationships of contemporary young women and men, and a young woman’s search for identity. In her latest works – the collections Štai (There, 2017), and Bu bu itis (Ord-in-ary-Life, 2019), poetry is born out of the authentic experience of everyday life – cooking, shopping, quarrels with husband and children, going to the beach or a martial arts class. 

Selected translations

English: Artistic cloning. Translated by Jonas Zdanys. Chicago: Virtual Artists Collective, 2010

Translations on-line: www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/agn-zagrakalyt