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23, 24 March, 2009. The acclaimed Lithuanian poet and translator, brilliant essayist and human rights campaigner, Tomas Venclova legitimately joins the honorable company of the most prominent critics of society and culture in Central and Eastern Europe, such as Czesław Miłosz, Vaclav Havel, Milan Kundera, and Joseph Brodsky. His latest collection of poetry “The Junction: Selected Poems” will be presented to the British public on Monday 23rd March 2009 at the British Library Conference Centre. The discussion will be joined by Fiona Sampson, editor of The Poetry Review. On Tuesday, 24 of March Tomas Venclova will take part in a discussion entitled “Lithuania and Europe: 20 years after the fall of the Berlin wall” at UCL SSEES (School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies), moderated by the director of the institute Robin Aizlewood.

Photo by Dylan Vaughan

Tomas Venclova was born in 1937 in Klaipeda, Lithuania. After graduating from Vilnius University, he travelled in the Eastern Bloc, where he met and translated Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. Venclova took part in the Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements and was one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. His activities led to a ban on publishing, exile and the stripping of his Soviet citizenship in 1977. Since 1985 Venclova has taught Slavic languages and literature at Yale University. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Vilenica 1990 International Literary Prize, the Lithuanian National Prize in 2000, the 2002 Prize of Two Nations, which he received jointly with Czeslaw Milosz, the 2005 Jotvingiai Prize, and the New Culture of New Europe Prize, 2005. His works include volumes of poetry, essays, literary biography, conversations and works on Vilnius. His poetry has been translated into English in Winter Dialogue (Northwestern University Press, 1997) and The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008).

Ellen Hinsey: "If in his earlier volume of selected poems in English, Winter Dialogue, there is a concern with endurance, and a search for absolutes in the face of adverse conditions both in Lithuania and in exile, in his most recent work we find the figure of a poet returning from exile, surveying what has occurred, what buildings still stand, and the fates of those one loved."

Both events are presented by the Lithuanian Embassy in the UK, Bloodaxe Books, the Books from Lithuania, the British Library, the British-Lithuanian Society, and SSEES.

To purchase the book please go here.

23 March, 6.30 pm, British Library Conference Centre, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB. Tickets £6 / 4. To purchase please go here. A reception will be held after this event.

24 March, 6.30 pm, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 16 Taviton Street, London WC1H 0BW (4th floor). Ticket £8. To register for the event please contact avilcinskas@aol.com