10 July 2018

Hera Lindsay Bird in Vilnius

Photo: Vytauto Paplausko Photo: Vytauto Paplausko Hera Lindsay Bird

On July 1 and 2, New Zealand’s poet Hera Lindsay Bird visited Vilnius and Kaunas. This has been one of the first meetings that will be more frequent in the context of Druskininkai Poetic Fall festival. We have plans to invite various poets and to organize meetings with them not just in Vilnius or Druskininkai, but also in other towns and cities of Lithuania.

The meeting with Hera Lindsay Bird at the Contemporary Art Center in Vilnius also engaged Virginija Cibarauskė, who is the translator of her poems to Lithuanian, literary critic and poet. This conversation with the guest was moderated by poet and translator Rimas Užgiris. At Kaunas Artists House, it was artist and film curator Paulina Drėgvaitė that interviewed the guest poet.

Hera Lindsay Bird read poems from her first book, "Hera Lindsay Bird", as well as the second one – "Pamper Me to the Hell and Back", which she calls the follow-up of her first one: it includes the writings that did not find room in her first book. She is currently "on a vacation from writing" – her book appeared in a short period of time, so now she wants to do something else.

During both meetings, and especially when walking around the autumn-rainy Vilnius, the poet, one might say, tore down the star myth that the press had created about her. Did all the copies of her book sell out overnight? But the number of copies was small. FB, instagram? I’ve deleted my accounts, because they only take time. Long texts? These are both a provocation and a desire to say the most important things. She was sincere, wearing a wide smile, and moderately funny – "when I’m back home, I’ll be lying in my bed without getting out of it for two days and watching movies."

 

 

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