Photo by Monika Požerskytė

Poet and translator Marius Burokas (b. 1977) is one of the most striking voices of his generation. After completing his degree in Lithuanian Language and Literature at Vilnius University, he has worked in cultural and popular journalism and is currently translating intensively from English. The authors whose works he has translated include Charles Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson, Allen Ginsberg, H.P. Lovecraft and others.  

His first collection of poems, Ideogramos (Ideograms, 1999), was regarded as post avant-garde: the poet used a variety of cultural signs, intertextual references, irony and paradoxes, managing to mix shock and humour even within a single line. Critics also emphasized the cinematic quality of his poems and their meticulous attention to detail. 

Burokas’s third collection, Išmokau nebūti (I’ve Learned Not To Be, 2011), is considered to be a turning point. The poems become more personal, approaching poetic minimalism – phrases get shorter, texts more focused and laconic. In Burokas’s latest collection, Švaraus buvimo (Of Clean Existence, 2018), the winner of the prestigious Poetry Spring Festival Award, the idea of “clean writing” becomes not only a poetic but also an existential stance that makes it possible to drop the ballast of excessive cultural context, and find one’s bearings in our consumerist world. 

Selected translations

Polish: Tu mieszkał Jonasz. Čia gyveno Jona. Translated by Agnieszka Rembiałkowska. Lublin: Warsztaty Kultury, 2021

English: Now I Understand. Translated by Rimas Uzgiris. Cardigan: Parthian Books, 2018

Ukrainian: Найменші речі. Translated by Marianna Kijanovska. Ternopil: Krok, 2018

Translations on-line: www.lyrikline.org/en/authors/marius-burokas