Photo by Laura Vansevičienė

Daiva Čepauskaitė (b. 1967) is a poet, dramatist and member of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union. She originally graduated from the Kaunas Medical Academy. Čepauskaitė also took acting classes at the Kaunas Youth Musical Studio. Since 1990 she has been employed full-time as an actress at the Kaunas Chamber Theatre. Čepauskaitė has published four collections of verse and is also known as a playwright. Her plays, which she has written for children as well as adults, have been staged by several Lithuanian theatres and won prizes from Lithuanian Radio. She became the main laureate of the annual Poetry Spring Festival in 2005.  

Čepauskaitė’s poetry is characteristically theatrical, too. In her debut collection, Bevardžiai (The Nameless, 1992), the poet plays creatively and ironically with the traditional quatrain and lyrical tones. The surprising juxtapositions, details of everyday life and playful rhymes turn reading the poems into an adventure. Literary critics sometimes describe the poems as mini–dramas, as they are full of tension, action, transformation, intrigue and amusing dénouements. 

In her latest collection, Baisiai Gražūs Eilėraščiai (Terribly Beautiful Poems, 2017), Čepauskaitė erases the boundaries between children’s poetry and “adult”, or simply serious, poetry. Although the collection is usually presented as intended for children, the poet successfully avoids the simplification of language and content that’s often found in children’s literature. Featuring traditional forms, the texts offer playful yet deep and skilful explorations of horror, the banality of everyday life, the nature of poetry and the vulnerability of human connection. The so-called “terrible” poems don’t offer the “happy ending” typical of children’s literature – fear is overcome by surviving it and putting it into an appealing costume of humour in your memory. 

Selected translations

Swedish: Det dagas: dikter. Translated by Liana Ruokytė-Jonsson, Juris Kronbergs. Tollarp:  Ariel, 2013

Translations on-line: www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/daiva-cepauskait