Braziūnas, Vladas

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Vladas Braziūnas © privat

Vladas Braziūnas, born in 1952, is a Lithuanian author of nine books of poetry, essayist and translator of Byelorussian, Croatian, French, Latvian, Polish, Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian poetry; a member of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union and the Lithuanian PEN center. Braziūnas grew up in the town of Pasvalys in northern Lithuania. At Vilnius University he studied journalism and Lithuanian philology. Vladas has mostly worked at various cultural and literary publications and has served as an editor-in-chief for the weekly Literatūra ir menas (Literature and Art). Since 1996, Braziūnas has concentrated on creative work.

Vladas Braziūnas’ poetry was first published in 1974. However, the first book of poems Slenka žaibas (As Lightning Moves) was held up at the publisher’s for seven years due to its "ideological and artistic (!) immaturity". The year it was published (Vaga, 1983) Vladas received Zigmas Gėlė prize for the best poetry debut. In 2002, Vladas Braziūnas’ poem Karilionas tūkstančiui ir vienai aušrai was selected as the winner of the literary competition organised by the chancellary of the President of the Republic of Lithuania on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the Lithuanian state. It was published in 2003 by Kronta.

Vladas Braziūnas has published translations of Byelorussian, Croatian, French, Latgalian, Latvian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian poetry, and Latvian, Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian prose (in 1990, Vyturys published the book Černobylis (Chernobyl) by the Ukrainian writer Yuriy Sherbak; in 1989 – the diary of the Latvian exile author Ojārs Mednis). Together with Sigitas Geda and Kęstutis Nastopka, Vladas Braziūnas translated the collection of poems Vabzdžių žingsniai (Baltos lankos, 1997) by the Latvian poet Uldis Bērziņš. In 2003, the Lithuanian Writers’ Union has published a collection of poems by Alicja Rybałko, translated from Polish by Vladas Braziūnas. For his achievements in translating Ukrainian poetry, Braziūnas received the Taras Sevchenko Fund award in 2002.

In 2004, Braziūnas was awarded the Jotvingiai Prize for his Lithuanian-French collection of verse būtasis nebaigtinis / imparfait (Vilnius, 2003), his translation into Lithuanian of Selected Poems by Alicja Rybałko (Vilnius, 2003) and the compilation of a posthumous poetry collection by Raimondas Jonutis Aušra kambary be langų (Dawn in a windowless room, Vilnius, 2003).