Vilnius Review

01/12/2025

Today is the birthday of our constant companion and one of the most important translators of Lithuanian literature, Rimas Užgiris! 🎂

Rimas is not only an accomplished translator, but also an excellent poet!

To celebrate his birthday, we invite you to listen to him reading the poem “Eppur Si Muove” under one of Vilnius' bridges.

Link to the video in the comment below 👇

25/11/2025

❝don’t think about dust
or about
what we turn into

the ghost ship will sail
full of darkness
in its hold❞

These are lines from Vytautas Kaziela's latest poetry book “Juodi išbaidyti žvėrys” (Black Frightened Beasts). Kaziela’s poetry opens up a quiet, vulnerable world—where memory, loss, and tenderness coexist in arresting simplicity. The poems were translated by Rimas Užgiris.

Step into a landscape where every silence speaks:

https://vilniusreview.com/poetry/vytautas-kaziela-black-frightened-beasts/

📷 by Vladas Braziūnas.

don’t think about dust or about what we turn into the ghost ship will sail full of darkness in its hold

24/11/2025

Good news travels fast: Vilnius Review has just landed at Brot Books Deli in Bratislava!

Brot Books Deli is famous for its lovingly curated mix of non-fiction gems spanning design, art, culture, business, self-help, and social studies. The two founders—graphic designers and book enthusiasts—only choose titles they truly believe in.

So if you’re wandering around Bratislava, swing by and find us on their shelves!

11/11/2025

While translators are working on new projects, we continue to introduce them to our readers. This time the questionnaire was answered by Kotryna Garanašvili, a long-time contributor to the Vilnius Review 👇

🔎WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF TRANSLATING?

For me it’s patience. Translation is, in many ways, a puzzle. It involves solving problems, whether you have to find a turn of phrase as beautiful as the original, or twelve words that rhyme and don’t contain the letter ‘a’. Coming up with a solution can be very satisfying – much like finally getting a tricky puzzle piece into the right place. More than that, it can be exhilarating. But each problem requires utmost dedication. A few problems in, you realize there are still many pages ahead, and many more problems to solve. Sometimes this middle part makes me restless. The stages of starting and finishing a translation really are exhilarating though.

🔎MOST DIFFICULT LITHUANIAN AUTHOR TO TRANSLATE.

I’m going to go with Rimantas Kmita, whenever he writes in Šiauliai dialect. It’s not just the dialect with all its phonetic and social nuances, but also historical slang and cultural references thrown in for good measure. It’s the epitome of difficult. In fact, I wrote an entire chapter of my dissertation to explain how difficult it is.

🔎 DO YOU READ TRANSLATIONS OR ONLY ORIGINALS?

Both. But when I encounter an intriguing passage, whatever I might be reading, I have an urge to check how it’s done in other languages. If it’s a translation, I’ll find the original, even if I don’t know the language. If I’m already reading the original, I’ll look into any available translations. I’m trying to resist this habit though, because it can get out of hand.

🔎WHAT IS THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU WHILE TRANSLATING?

I think translation can be intuitive to the point of being mysterious. Once I asked an author if I can change the title of their story in the translation, because I thought it sounded better that way. They got back to me and said: “Actually, this was the name of my story. My editor asked me to change it just before we published.” Turns out I didn’t change the title after all – I simply retrieved the original one. These kinds of intuitive mind-reading incidents actually happen a lot to me when I translate!

🔎 WHAT IS A RITUAL THAT HELPS YOU IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION?

I need a desk. It might sound obvious, but once I have a desk, or a stable surface resembling a desk, the rest is not as important. I know some people prefer to work in bed or curled up on the couch, but I find it nearly impossible. One time, I had tight translation deadline and had just moved into an Airbnb with zero desks or flat surfaces, so I had a tiny desk delivered the next day. The hours I spent waiting for it, stretched on the floor with my laptop, were more challenging than any translation problem I faced. Once I’m settled behind a desk, I prefer to work alone, deeply focused, notifications off, headphones on. In the editing stage, I can work anywhere and be around people again.

🔎WHAT IS A DRINK THAT INCREASES THE TRANSLATOR’S WORK POTENTIAL?

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will do the trick, if you can get your hands on it. Otherwise, coffee.

🔎WHEN THE EDITOR CORRECTS YOUR TRANSLATIONS, YOU ARE…?

I know I’ve been very lucky with editors I’ve worked with, and I’m curious and grateful for their sharp eye and their suggestions. Ideally, it’s a collaborative relationship, and knowing you have an editor to discuss your translation with feels reassuring.

🔎WHAT IS A TRANSLATOR’S WORST NIGHTMARE?

Monolingualism.

🔎WILL AI TAKE YOUR JOB?

I’ve been teaching a class called Lost in AI Translation, and it’s one of the things we talk about. At one of the seminars, I was curious if AI could help me write a creative commentary on one of my translations. I had a really clear idea of what I wanted. The results almost brought me to tears, and not in a good way. The only thing this helped me see was that AI was not going to do it for me. You can’t prompt your way to real creativity and flair. Also, translation is a holistic process, and whatever AI comes up with is only a part of the whole thing. Translator’s job involves more than the actual act of translation: it’s also being an ambassador, an advocate, a bridge between languages and cultures. The dedication involved in every part of translation is subtle, like in any art, and very human. Even if delegating it to AI might seem cost-effective, it comes at its own cost. I want to read the work by human translators, and to be one myself.

07/11/2025

❝I feel the sea with my fingers, feet, ankles, barely swirling – the waves aren’t breaking today. The water slowly envelops my body, as if I am sinking into a well with walls into infinity – where is this feeling from which I am returning?❞

We are sharing an excerpt from Valdas Papievis' latest novel “Ankančiam pasauly” (In a blinding world). The mood of the novel echoes the mood, fears, and melancholy of the present world. Translated by Jayde Will.

📷 by Saulius Vasiliauskas.

This translation was funded by the Lithuanian Culture Institute.

I feel the sea with my fingers, feet, ankles, barely swirling – the waves aren’t breaking today. The water slowly envelops my body, as if I am sinking into a well with walls into infinity – where is this feeling from which I am returning?

03/11/2025

A significant part of Lithuanian literature has been translated into English thanks to one man – long-time translator and Vilnius Review contributor RIMAS UŽGIRIS.

Continuing the effort to introduce the translators to our readers, we are publishing Rimas' answers to the questionnaire 👇

🔎WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF TRANSLATING?

Translation challenges depend on the text. Puns and word play always require a bit of creative reworking if they are at all salvageable. Tightly knit rhyme and meter in poetry can be very hard to convey without either loosening them up or re-writing some of the text. Insertions of other languages, local slang or cultural references also present unique challenges where one has to decide to what extent to foreignize or domesticate one’s translation. Turning long, synthetic language sentences into analytic language sentences with a different stylistic emphasis can also be very challenging.

🔎 THE MOST DIFFICULT LITHUANIAN AUTHOR TO TRANSLATE.

In my experience, Tomas Venclova and Maironis have been most difficult because of the rhyme and meter they regularly use. Maironis will often use short lines as well, which don’t give the translator much “space” to find the relevant rhymes and rhythms. Venclova rarely goes shorter than the pentameter, but there is also no “filler” material in his lines—no standard romantic rhetoric as in Maironis that can be reworked without affecting the basic meaning of the poem. Venclova deploys unique imagery in a carefully constructed process that forms something like a poetic argument, and moving anything around can destroy the process of his poem’s meaning creation. Thus, one’s search for rhyme and meter is correspondingly restrained.

Lithuanian prose can sometimes present a more arduous challenge than a lot of free verse poetry. There is a baroque style of writing that is still around which involves the construction of long, elaborate sentences with all sorts of dependent clauses, adjectives, and figurative language. Turning such sentences into coherent English, with its analytic subject-verb-object preference, its dislike of excess adjectives and ornamentation, can be a brain-breaking endeavor. This is one reason why I prefer translating poetry.

🔎 DO YOU READ OTHER TRANSLATIONS OR ONLY THE ORIGINALS?

I do not read other translations of work I am translating, though I may have read such before I took on the job of translating a certain text. It’s best not to be influenced. I don’t want to create a “Frankenstein” translation that unconsciously pieces together the work of various people, though that could be interesting, I suppose.

🔎 WHAT IS THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU WHILE TRANSLATING?

Nothing happens to me while I am translating, except words, words, and more words. And the mysterious opening into that they can make.

🔎 WHAT IS A RITUAL THAT HELPS YOU IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION?

There is no ritual. At a certain point I am ready to go and I do it. If I had to translate long novels then perhaps I would need a ritual to get me through all those – all too many – words.

🔎 WHAT IS A DRINK THAT INCREASES THE TRANSLATOR’S WORK POTENTIAL?

Coffee.

🔎 WHEN THE EDITOR CORRECTS YOUR TRANSLATIONS, YOU ARE…?

It depends on the editor. If they just go and rewrite my text then I don’t work with them anymore. If they catch errors and offer interesting suggestions then I am grateful.

🔎 WHAT IS A TRANSLATOR’S WORST NIGHTMARE?

An author who rewrites your text because they “know” English. Some translators may like such “collaboration” with the author. I do not.

🔎 WILL AI TAKE YOUR JOB?

No. But really, you should ask the people who hire me. It’s they who will make the decision. You, for example.

My general view on the matter is that AI has no consciousness and even if it did it would not be based on human embodied experiences. In literature, in the use of language to express who we are and what we are experiencing as we go through our astonishingly various lives, we will always want real embodied human translators who struggle over those landscapes of consciousness formed out of language. Translators are like pilgrims on a trail of speech to a communion they will never reach. Literature that is not part of this human, all too human road to the Other is just an imitation of literature, and there will always be people who want that real human interface, that opening of a window onto another fragile embodied human consciousness which language pitched at its most intense level can provide. (Of course, there will be people who don’t care about this. But there always were.)

Again, how much anyone will be willing to pay for this is not a question I can answer, though my impression is that a desire for the genuine has not died, and may be growing stronger even as the artificial spreads unchecked. If I am wrong, we may end up like monks in monasteries dedicated to real books, scribbling away in dusky candle light with little pay. I could live with that, though AI could do worse things to us. Losing translation jobs may be the least of our worries.

Interview with Rimas Užgiris - interviewed by Saulius Vasiliauskas

28/10/2025

❝In my earliest memory
I’m six months old.
Father lays me down on a black duvet
with white polka dots.
It is not the duvet I remember, but the fear
the unnatural black-and-white contrast.❞

We're bringing you poems from Kristina Tamulevičiūtė's second poetry book “Namai” (Home). Poems were translated by Egle Elena Murauskaite.

KRISTINA TAMULEVIČIŪTĖ (b. 1989 in Šiauliai) is a poet, writer, and translator. She studied Lithuanian philology and Slovenian language at Vilnius University, with internships at the Universities of Ljubljana and Sarajevo. Since 2008, Tamulevičiūtė has published over a hundred of her works in the Lithuanian cultural press. Tamulevičiūtė translates from Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, English, and Spanish. Her first poetry book Gyvybė (“Life”) was shortlisted for the Book of the Year Award and won the Zigmas Gėlė Prize for the best literary debut.

📸by Sofija Filipovic.

Lithuanian literature is characterised by deep traditions of poetry. Once originating from folklore, mythology and history, today Lithuanian poetry is more diverse and vibrant than ever before.

22/10/2025

❝Vivid theatrical moments in this poetry collection mirror life itself: the boundary between theater and life dissolves, and everything sinks into mist – “The image was not sharp: we knew nothing / about the contrast, color temperature, saturation.” (p. 11). The narrator continually strives to return to his origins, to understand the meaning of each word, the meaning of his own existence, which is not performative, which includes all of his childhood, youth, vitality, and sorrow.❞

Linas Daugėla reviews Mindaugas Nastaravičius' poetry collection “Antra dalis” (Part two). The review was translated by Agnieška Leščinska.

Grab the full text here:

Mindaugas Nastaravičius is a Lithuanian poet, playwright, and journalist whose poetry books set themselves apart. For instance, his second poetry collection Mo includes various poems that are playful and are written with many different structures, for example, three-line poems and sonnets, and some...

21/10/2025

What a great news: we’re thrilled to announce that Vilnius Review has been accepted into the prestigious London shop run by MagCulture! 🎉

MagCulture is much more than just a magazine store. It's an online resource, magazine shop, event producer, and editorial consultancy that champions independent voices in print, even as digital media grows.

Being included in MagCulture’s selection means our magazine now stands alongside over 700 curated titles from around the world, in a space that values editorial design, creativity and bold ideas. 📗✍🏻

At the same time, it proves that even the literature of a small country can be visible on the global market! 🌎

Check out the link and order your copy of the newest issue from London right away: https://magculture.com/products/vilnius-review-2025

21/10/2025

Vilnius Review would not exist without its excellent team of TRANSLATORS. Since translators usually remain behind the scenes, we decided to prepare a short questionnaire to gradually introduce them all to our audience. Let the translators take center stage! 🔊

The first one who hurried to answer our questions is Egle Elena Murauskaite. She joined the team only last year, but with great enthusiasm and lots of ideas! Read her answers below.

QUESTIONNAIRE 👇

🔎 WHAT IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF TRANSLATING?

The instinct embellish the words of the original author, sometimes it’s hard not to smear my own verbiage onto a piece that is sufficiently stylistically similar

🔎 MOST DIFFICULT LITHUANIAN AUTHOR TO TRANSLATE.

No idea, I have not encountered great difficulties thus far, but peculiar local references and connotations tend to pose a challenge – too extensive to footnote, and sometimes rather cringe too.

🔎 DO YOU READ TRANSLATIONS OR ONLY ORIGINALS?

Usually the originals, especially for work. But I do read widely, especially poetry, so authors who write in languages I do not speak (e.g., Korean, Czech, Polish) are only accessible via translation.

🔎 WHAT IS THE ODDEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU WHILE TRANSLATING?

I happened to take a tour with ornithologists, trekking for over an hour in scorching heat to take a closer look at Coracias garrulus (European roller/žalvarnis) – a reasonably rare bird, tiny and colourful – only to find myself translating two Lithuanian poets that same year, who used žalvarnis as a poetic reference to various birds in the crow family.

🔎 WHAT IS A RITUAL THAT HELPS YOU IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION?

Connecting with the author.

🔎 WHAT IS A DRINK THAT INCREASES THE TRANSLATOR’S WORK POTENTIAL?

Cocoa.

🔎 WHEN THE EDITOR CORRECTS YOUR TRANSLATIONS, YOU ARE…?

Concerned about oversimplification.

🔎 WHAT IS A TRANSLATOR’S WORST NIGHTMARE?

Deliberately choosing a specific word over the alternatives, and the editor and/or the author jumping to a more common term, refusing to be argued out of it due to familiarity, despite the connotations.

🔎 WILL AI TAKE YOUR JOB?

Who knows. It won’t take my pleasure.

📸by Gintarė Grigėnaitė.

17/10/2025

❝mush is now falling from the sky
mush like sorbet it’s so wet and cold
a slippery swill

now mush is falling from the sky
and they’re talking about it on tv
the roads are getting all slippery
drivers are told to take care

now mush is falling from the sky
but people are not watching television
they’re looking at some other screen
and they see how mush is falling
from the sky

mush is falling from the sky
it descends it splatters on heads
it splatters on roofs and branches and
the trees slowly lower their hands❞

We are sharing some poems from Dovydas Grajauskas' second book of poetry “Debreceno gatvės bliuzas” (Debrecen Street Blues). This book has just earned him the prestigious Young Yotvingian Prize. Poems were translated by Rimas Užgiris.

Read the poems while listening to some Blues: https://vilniusreview.com/poetry/dovydas-grajauskas/

Photo by Skaistė Grajauskė.

Lithuanian literature is characterised by deep traditions of poetry. Once originating from folklore, mythology and history, today Lithuanian poetry is more diverse and vibrant than ever before.