Rimas Uzgiris’s book launch: a poetry reading for Ukraine
[LT] Rugsėjo 17 d. 18 val. Vilniaus literatų namuose vyks Rimo Uzgirio knygos „Khmelnytsky Station“, pelniusios 2025 m. „Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Award“ apdovanojimą, pristatymas. Autorius skaitys eilėraščius iš naujojo rinkinio, o prie jo prisijungs lietuvių poetai Marius Burokas ir Jurgita Jasponytė, taip pat rašantys apie karą Ukrainoje. Renginį anglų kalba moderuos poetė Marija Mažulė. Renginio metu bus galima įsigyti knygą, o visos surinktos lėšos bus skirtos Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos literatūros fondui – paramai Ukrainai.
[ENG] Rimas Uzgiris will launch his 2025 Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Award winning Khmelnytsky Station on 17 September at 18:00 at the Vilnius Literary House. He will read from the collection and will be joined by Lithuanian poets Marius Burokas and Jurgita Jasponytė who have also written poems about the war in Ukraine. They will read in Lithuanian and Uzgiris will read his translations of their work. Burokas will also share some of his translations into Lithuanian from Khmelnytsky Station. The event will be moderated by the poet Marija Mažulė in English. The chapbook will be available to buy at the event, and all proceeds will go to the Lithuanian Writers’ Union Literature Fund to support Ukraine.
Khmelnytsky Station Poems
Rimas Uzgiris
Rimas Uzgiris is a poet and translator who was born in the USA but lives in Lithuania. He is the author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Tarp (Kauko laiptai, 2019). Uzgiris has also translated numerous poetry collections from Lithuanian as well as the Venice Biennale Golden Lion winning opera Sun and Sea. His work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, Barrow Street, TLS and elsewhere. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Grant, NEA Translation Fellowship, and the Lithuanian St. Jerome Translation Prize, Uzgiris teaches at Vilnius University in the translation studies department. The poems in this collection were inspired by two trips to Ukraine in the fall of 2024 where he was an invited speaker and reader at the Translatorium festival in Khmelnytsky and the Land of Poets festival in Lviv.
"What apple can you offer / In a garden being blown / To hell?" Written against the harrowing backdrop of Russia’s attempt at Ukrainian civilizational erasure, the poems of Khmelnytsky Station render the bewildering complexities of bearing witness to circumstances in which the compassionate observer can "find no place," capable only of "standing like a voided ticket in [an] empty square / with just some euros, band-aids, words to share." In pages as deeply felt as they are formally diverse, Khmelnytsky Station records the horrible incongruities born of the dailiness of war — the intersections of atrocity and domesticity, bomb sirens and coffee shops, despair and love — while paying homage to the anguished dignity of a people who continue to defy the prospect of their own extinction.
— Malachi Black, author of Indirect Light
[ENG] Rimas Uzgiris will launch his 2025 Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Award winning Khmelnytsky Station on 17 September at 18:00 at the Vilnius Literary House. He will read from the collection and will be joined by Lithuanian poets Marius Burokas and Jurgita Jasponytė who have also written poems about the war in Ukraine. They will read in Lithuanian and Uzgiris will read his translations of their work. Burokas will also share some of his translations into Lithuanian from Khmelnytsky Station. The event will be moderated by the poet Marija Mažulė in English. The chapbook will be available to buy at the event, and all proceeds will go to the Lithuanian Writers’ Union Literature Fund to support Ukraine.
Khmelnytsky Station Poems
Rimas Uzgiris
Rimas Uzgiris is a poet and translator who was born in the USA but lives in Lithuania. He is the author of North of Paradise (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Tarp (Kauko laiptai, 2019). Uzgiris has also translated numerous poetry collections from Lithuanian as well as the Venice Biennale Golden Lion winning opera Sun and Sea. His work has appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, Barrow Street, TLS and elsewhere. Recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Grant, NEA Translation Fellowship, and the Lithuanian St. Jerome Translation Prize, Uzgiris teaches at Vilnius University in the translation studies department. The poems in this collection were inspired by two trips to Ukraine in the fall of 2024 where he was an invited speaker and reader at the Translatorium festival in Khmelnytsky and the Land of Poets festival in Lviv.
"What apple can you offer / In a garden being blown / To hell?" Written against the harrowing backdrop of Russia’s attempt at Ukrainian civilizational erasure, the poems of Khmelnytsky Station render the bewildering complexities of bearing witness to circumstances in which the compassionate observer can "find no place," capable only of "standing like a voided ticket in [an] empty square / with just some euros, band-aids, words to share." In pages as deeply felt as they are formally diverse, Khmelnytsky Station records the horrible incongruities born of the dailiness of war — the intersections of atrocity and domesticity, bomb sirens and coffee shops, despair and love — while paying homage to the anguished dignity of a people who continue to defy the prospect of their own extinction.
— Malachi Black, author of Indirect Light
Where is it happening?
Šv. Jono 11-16, Vilnius, Lithuania
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Host or PublisherVilnius, Unesco literatūros miestas
