Editorial
Warm greetings to all of you, our critical readers and charitable critics. More than once I’ve been asked (as I’m sure all of you have as well): Where can I read your poetry? Your prose? Who are your most interesting writers? What is Lithuanian literature like? What is most important to the writers in your country?
Laima Vincė
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- Fiction
They, with their curses, their shoving, their self-righteous hatred, had taken away her voice—her voice that loved to sing, to gossip, to chatter with Lucia and with her sisters. The voice that shared her dreams with Mama in the morning, in the kitchen, over a cup of black tea, before anyone else in the house was awake, even before Papa left for the pharmacy. The voice that egged her into squabbling with her brother Ilya. The voice that teased Papa during their long talks about philosophy, about Pushkin, Lermontov, Don Quixote. The voice that talked too much, and made Mama bade her stop, be quiet, be still, to give her a moment’s peace so that she may think. Her poet’s voice.
That voice was gone.
Akvilina Cicėnaite: “When I write, I feel at home…”
- Details
- Interviews
I wrote most of this book during the pandemic and finished it during the last Sydney lockdown. With the daily statistics of deaths as a backdrop it was impossible not to ponder on our own mortality, disappearance, the body as a home for memory, the inevitable fact that if I die now – if we die – there will be no one to tell our story. Writers have two important tools – language and memory. I write so I can remember, and I write to not forget.
Greta Ambrazaitė
- Details
- Poetry
can it be that you’re a miracle (I always hear this word),
not a real one, but as if, as if it were a question of belief
the belief or knowledge that you are an independent
heart’s pulse, viscous dust quickened by lightning
Nerijus Cibulskas
- Details
- Poetry
we are comets with the tails chopped off
our burning heads crashing
to rest
Tomas Vaiseta
- Details
- Fiction
You see, all the cats (there were seven of them at the time) lived according to a strict, ascetic, individual time table, so strict that one might think that they lived only for the purpose of putting it into effect, that that time table was divine guidance with the cats being the devoted and trustworthy executors of its will. It would not be overstating the case to say that behind them their actions – meaningless at first glance, their everyday languorous movements, their royal-like ways of stretching and snoozing, there lay a noble mission to uphold our world order, which we humans, of course, carelessly, irresponsibly, relentlessly disrupt like foaming waves do endless sand dunes.
Antanas Šimkus: “Poetry Means Being Myself”
- Details
- Interviews
I think that schools and universities as well as other educational institutions need societies like that – not to cultivate some higher level of artistry but to develop a humanitarian environment – where people learn to discuss, be silent, listen, and talk about important things. In other words, where they can get that sense of community that every lover of literature, or any true individualist, secretly thinks about. We write in solitude, but the sense of being in a safe environment for showing and discussing our work is equally important.
