Photo by Monika Požerskytė

Aušra Kaziliūnaitė (b. 1987) is one of the brightest poetic stars of her generation. She is a doctoral student of philosophy at Vilnius University, a film and culture critic and a human rights activist. Kaziliūnaitė is the author of four poetry books and has received many prestigious literature awards.  

Kaziliūnaitė’s poems have been translated into fourteen languages. In 2018, the collection Mėnulis yra tabletė (The Moon is a Pill) was included in the list of the top five books by Baltic authors translated into English. The writer is regularly invited to international festivals and book fairs. The same year, she delivered a performance, Poetry Society, with Steven J Fowler at the European Poetry Festival in London and read her poems at the opening of the London Book Fair, as well as at Poets’ House in New York the same year. 

Kaziliūnaitė‘s poems could be placed alongside the literary avant–garde. The author favours surrealist poetics, impressive metaphors, elements of horror and the grotesque, the poetics of dark beauty, and a cinematic eye for detail. Images, captured as if by an anonymous eye, intertwine to form stories and word pictures, whose aim is to reveal what is concealed under the surface of the everyday. It is no coincidence that the reader is frequently encouraged to “look under the skin”. This relates to Kaziliūnaitė’s critique of society and exposure of underlying power structures. In her most recent book Esu aptrupėjusios sienos (I am Crumbled Walls, 2016) the poet collaborates with the photographer Laima Stasiulionytė, whose monumental black and white photography expands the boundaries of the poetic text. 

Selected translations

English: The Moon is a Pill. Translated by Rimas Uzgiris. Cardigan: Parthian Books, 2018

Translations on-line: www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/ausra-kaziliunait