Writers and poets descend on Vilnius

VILNIUS - Due to its mysteries, histories and fascinations of the literary, Lithuania’s cultural capital, Vilnius, was handpicked to host the internationally acclaimed writers workshops – Summer Literary Seminars [SLS], from July 31 till Aug. 13.
For the two weeks, the city’s artistic alleys will be bustling with foreign writers, notable spinners of poetry and prose, including president of the Guggenheim Foundation in New York, Edward Hirsch, Croatian-American, Josip Novakovich and Jewish humorist Joseph Kertes.

Such scribes and many more will be descending on Lithuania to present panels and readings to international guests, local literati and the curious public, at a tone of trendy locations around the city.
The event reels in attendees from three continents: North America, Europe and Africa, invited over a common love of language, and the excitement to explore a new place.

“A lot of writers have said that in order to write well, or in order to push past what you know, you have to push past the familiar. And the best way to do this, but not go into the unfamiliar, is to go with a bunch of like-minded people and put yourself in a different environment than you’re accustomed too,” explained SLS program director, Jake Levine.
Though it originated in the former Soviet city of Leningrad in 1998, one of the key goals of SLS today is to throw participants into the deep waters of different cultures, in this case Lithuanian, rather than have them stand on the sidelines as objective observers.

By taking foreign participants out of their comfort zone and exposing them to a city as abundant in histories and open in context as Vilnius, heads of the program bank it will inspire all those partaking.
“The city has a multitude of contexts, lots of empty space which everyone can read their own meaning into,” said Russian-born founder of SLS, Mikhail Iossel, who nowadays holds rank as English Professor at Canada’s Concordia University.
“SLS tends to usually go to places in a difficult transition. And in the case of Vilnius, its post-Soviet transition,” he noted, while also conveying how an important feature of the program was its immersion into the local literary cultural scene.

“This program has implicitly positioned itself as a fairly unique platform upon which the international and North American literary communities can meet, and have met, and forge friendships and engage in joint creative projects,” he nodded.
This year, some of the creative projects planned sound like stories out of Alice in Wonderland. These include a Secret Backyard Bagel Party, to be held on Wednesday Aug. 10, and the hazardously handled Literary Death Match, on Aug. 5, taking place at Fluxus Ministry on Gedimino Street.

Created by New Yorker Todd Zuniga, Literary Death Match stands as one of the seminars’ most entertaining events. Already a hit in London, Paris and Chicago, this all-in brain brawl will bring what it does, a highly-charged gladiatorial reading challenge, to Vilnius for the first time.
“Literary Death Match is a worldwide phenomenon. It’s like a battle, but it’s funny. There is a jury, and people read their work to the jury, who in a very facetious manner judge their work. When someone is reading for over, say, one minute, people start throwing random objects from the audience. It’s all very fast paced,” laughed Iossel.
“Nobody really gets injured. Though, people’s egos can get hurt. We have a famous poet in Montreal, who suddenly lost, and he was inconsolable.”

If this physical side of literature is beyond what you are searching for, there are still reams of activities for the public, ongoing in different venues around the city, starting from a first open reading on Aug. 2.
Another portion of the summer sessions will be a parallel program, named Jewish Lithuania 2011: Litvak Experiences. While traces of Lithuania’s Jewish history can still be found in patches around the city, this project, partnering SLS with the Litvak Studies Institute, aims to show lesser-known sites of importance, by offering walking tours of Vilnius, the “Jerusalem of Lithuania,” as their Web site touts, along with travel throughout the country, to learn about the depth of Jewish Lithuania.

“For people with Litvak roots, with Jewish roots, it would be filled with the importance of the fact this used to be the most vibrant of all the Jewish places in Europe, and then it was no more,” said Iossel. “Sometimes the absence of something is no less of a context than its presence, because you can feel it was here, then it was no more, and that in itself is a tragedy.”
During Nazi occupation in Lithuania, 95 percent of Lithuanian Jews were murdered or deported, so retracing their roots is both a rarity and a blessing.

To find out locations, times and dates for the entire programs of the Summer Literary Seminars and Jewish Lithuania 2011, visit their Web site at www.sumlitsem.org/lithuania