 Birutė Marcinkevičiūtė (Birutė Mar) (b. 1969 in Kaunas) is a poet. She attended the J. Naujalis Art School and studied at the St. Petersburg Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinematography. Since 1993 she has been an actress at the Vilnius Academic Theatre, and later the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre.
Mar made her debut with the poetry collection Unsent Letters (Neišsiųsti laiškai) in 1995. Kokoro, a book of essays based on impressions from travels in Japan, was published in 1999, while her second poetry collection, Solo, appeared in 2001. Her diary of a trip to East Asia, Homes Redolent with Cinnamon (Cinamonu kvepiantys namai), was published in 2007.
Mar has also written the libretto for the children’s opera Birdy (Paukštė), a screenplay for the short film Unwritten Letter (Neparašytas laiškas) based on the life and work of Šatrija Ragana, and stage adaptations for one-woman shows based on Marguerite Duras’ The Lover (2001) and Sophocles’ Antigone (2003). She wrote her first play, Make-Up Opera (Grimo opera) in 2004; she is also author of The Poetess (Poetė) (2005) – a one-woman play based on the works and diaries of Lithuanian poet Salomėja Nėris.
Her poetry has been translated into English, Germany, Estonian and other languages.
The poet currently resides in Vilnius.Critics' Say Poetry for Birutė Marcinkevičiūtė is the potential for knowledge. Which is why her poems most often shun foregrounded moods and states; instead, like a rainbow, they disclose knowledge wreathed in lyricism, thousands of droplets of knowledge that are filled with the glorious shimmering of all our light.
[...] It is difficult to believe that in the pragmatic end of this century, which has stripped man down to the point of revulsion, to cynical nihilism, which still believes God is dead and not alive in man, that at the end of this bloodily predacious century there stands a girl who trusts that everyone is obedient to tenderness. This is how great poetry that relies on silence and the pure word begins and lives.
Robertas Keturakis // Introduction to Birutė Marcinkevičiutė’s book Unsent Letters. Vilnius, 1995 Bibliography Neišsiųsti laiškai (Unsent Letters): [poems]. Vilnius: Vilnius Pedagogical University Publishers, 1995
Kokoro: japoniški akimirksniai (Kokoro: Japanese moments): [essays]. Vilnius: Vaga, 1999
Solo: [poems]. Vilnius: Strofa, 2001
Cinamonu kvepiantys namai (Homes Redolent with Cinnamon): [from the East Asia Diaries]. Vilnius: Kronta, 2007
|
