April 29, 2011
This August, I will travel from Boston to Vilnius, Lithuania and stay for two and a half months. My interest in Lithuanian literature began when—being both a writer and partly of Lithuanian heritage—I went to the library to seek out works by Lithuanian authors in English translation and found very little. Over the past year, I’ve been strengthening my grasp on the Lithuanian language, with the aim of making the work of these authors available to English-speaking audiences. Thus far, I have focused especially on the work of Liudvikas Jakimavičius, a contemporary Lithuanian poet whom I admire. I hope that in translating my contemporaries in Vilnius, my own writing will begin to absorb the great cognizance of history that is so often found in Eastern European poetry.
You may follow my trip more closely here: