Marcelijus Martinaitis at Ledbury Poetry Festival
Updated 2008-07-20
5 July, 2008. This year Lithuanian poet Marcelijus Martinaitis and his translator Laima Vincė Sruoginis are part of the Ledbury Poetry Festival. On 5th of July, at 2pm in Burgage Hall both personalities will be featured in the event titled “Can Poetry Change Anything?”
Marcelijus Martinaitis is an extraordinary figure, whose poems about an invented character called Kukutis, a wise fool, have entered Lithuanian folk culture and were chanted at mass political rallies in the late 80s and early 90s. After the fall of the USSR and the advent of Lithuanian independence, his hilarious poems about a former Party apparatchik who has to try to adapt to capitalism but can never quite prevent his earlier ways of thinking and speaking from leaking out, again helped shape contemporary Lithuanian national consciousness. Also appearing, Laima Sruoginis, poet and translator whose latest work is called “Book of Portraits”, represents the next generation of Lithuanian poets.
The event organized in collaboration with the Lithuanian Embassy in the UK, sponsored by Books from Lithuania.
