Discussion with: Birutė Jonuškaitė – writer, Agnieszka Rembiałkowska – translator, Jagoda Graboś – moderator | Workshops of Culture, Grodzka 7 – patio POL, PJM

About the collection

A decade of reflections culminates in 70 poems that serve as an extraordinary primer on women’s lives. Presented alphabetically, from the ‘Altruist’ to the ‘Life-worn’ and ‘heaven-gliding,’ the collection brings together diverse figures from across time and culture: the goddess Liethua, Saint Veronica, nameless historical figures, literary characters like Manon and Madame Butterfly, and 20th-century creators. These women—emigrants, artists, cleaners, friends, and family—seek identity, create, destroy, love, betray, enchant, give birth, and confront death. They emerge empathetically in the narrative, sometimes as subjects, often through detail or impression, their voices shaping a rich tapestry of experience.

About the authors

Birutė Jonuškaitė was born into a Lithuanian family in the Sejny region. She is a poet, prose writer, essayist, and translator. She graduated in journalism from Vilnius University. She writes novels, short stories, and poetry, and translates Polish literature into Lithuanian. She translates contemporary Polish poetry and has translated novels by H. Krall, J. Dehnel, M. Tulli,  as well as works by J. Rudnicki, M. Guśniowska, J. Korczak, M. Duszka, and B. Gruszka-Zych.
For many years, she served as president of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union. She was one of the first scholars of Czesław Miłosz’s work in post-Soviet Lithuania.  She has received numerous literary and cultural awards. In 2006, she was honored with the Witold Hulewicz Prize for fostering closer ties between Polish and Lithuanian literature, as well as the Gold Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland. In 2020, she received the Baltic Council Prize for her literary work.   In 2025, she received the Order of Merit for Lithuania medal for her exceptional mastery of the Lithuanian language and her artistic portrayal of the people of her region. Her short stories and poems have been translated into English, Polish, Georgian, Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, German, Spanish, French, Slovak, Slovenian, Greek, Czech, and Croatian. In Poland, her poetry collection A Child with Graying Eyes (2004) and the novels Maranta (2020) and Maestro (2022) have been published.

Born in 1980, Agnieszka Rembiałkowska is a prominent figure in Baltic studies, serving as an academic teacher, translator, and editor, with affiliations including the University of Warsaw. Since 2005, she has specialized in literary translations, primarily from Lithuanian and occasionally from Latvian. Her commitment to the field is further demonstrated through her participation in numerous translation seminars and workshops, and her role as co-organizer of the Spring of Poetry festival in Warsaw since 2016. She is also a proud member of the Polish Literary Translators Association.
Rembiałkowska’s translation work has been widely celebrated. She received the prestigious Poezijos pavasaris international literary festival translation award in 2018 for her contributions to the poetry of Sigitas Geda, Nijolė Miliauskaitė (co-translated with Alina Kuzborska), and Vladas Braziūnas . Further accolades include the Algis Kalėda Award in 2022. Her talent has also earned her nominations for the European Poet of Freedom Award (2020) for her translation of Agnė Žagrakalytė’s poetry collection Just Now, and the Gdynia Literary Award (2021) for her translation of Birutė Jonuškaitė’s novel Maranta.