I’m thrilled to announce that my cinepoem, I AM NOT YOU ARE, has been selected as a finalist for the inaugural Midwest Video Poetry Fest (2020). The details: “We received over 1600 submissions and chose just 36 films to include in our two-day festival, which will take place on November 19 and 20, 2020. At…

In 2013, I set out to write a poetry book that raged against the poetry MFA machine within the corporate-modeled university system. At that time, it was clear that, over the decade previous, universities, which employed most of the poets and writers whom I knew, were looking to level any sense of artistic freedom and…

I want to extend my sincerest thanks to PEN America for offering me a poet’s COVID-19 relief grant. In late March, I found out that the 6-month contract job I had lined up for the rest of the year (May-Dec) was no more due to COVID. PEN helped immediately with relief, and offered a poet…

From a new poetry collection, “Between Plague & Kleptocracy: Invented Poetic Creations & Conversations of Seva & Bill”, in which I cross-reference poems between Vsevolod Nekrasov & Bill Knott to serve as medium and “translator” of their posthumous conversations / invented collaborations. The poems are written in the voice / tone / style of both…

After Jeffrey Gibson’s exhibition “Like a Hammer” at Seattle Art Museum (2019), I was inspired to continue exploring more deeply the pagan aspects of my Baltic culture. Gibson explores his own Native American heritage: his works include large and mid-sized figurative objects, text-based wall hangings, a selection of illustrious Everlast beaded punching bags, painted works…

When I wrote my 2013 collection, Professional Poetry, the poems were intended to speak to the value of the working person / poet through the lens of her/his/their “day” jobs and the artist localizing her place in this structure. I examined the commodification of poetry and the absurdity of “mktg” in this space. “I Am…

Another poem-turned-cinepoem from Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) (now on Amazon) / Release 12.

My recent ode to #moscowmitch and his neo-Soviet benefactor, the aluminum magnate. Human Repair Kit

The White Stockings cinepoems will be screened at Chicago Filmmakers 2/1!

New cinepoem from my latest poetry book, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), Secret Airplanes Press, 2018. Read more here.

The talented Elina Krima + inspo for this piece Walter Oltmann First cinepoem of the year explores what it means to wear the suits of natural instinct, still moving through familial separations (especially in light of children actually being cruelly separated from parents). This is perhaps the tip of fear we collectively recycle for the…

I am thrilled to announce that my White Stockings cinepoems—in collaboration with filmmaker & visionary / media artist Tess Cortés—have been selected as finalist for the upcoming Festival Fotogenia in Mexico City this December. FOTOGENIA is the first international film poetry and divergent narratives festival of its kind in Mexico City, promoting a space for alternative conception…

Spoon River Poetry Review has nominated two of my poems from my collection, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secret Airplanes Press, 2018) for a 2020 IL Arts Council Award! In most countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is the government department responsible for state diplomacy as well as for providing for the country’s citizens abroad—often…

Back in 2005 (?!) I was a 30-something, passionate-struggling-copywriter-poet who began a diary-of-sorts on MySpace about my pending divorce. It was extremely painful, but also liberating and necessary in a very Buddhist-groundless way (in hindsight). Around that time, I was researching family stories passed down through old documents and interviews with my grandmother, and I…

YES! My White Stockings cinepoems will be featured in the Ready Freddy Film Festival August 24 at The Den Theatre. The festival highlights alternative and original work within the Chicago area as well as international work. 

Originally published on The Conversant (March 2016). Interview by poet Virginia Konchan. Conversant: In your own history, as a first-generation American of Lithuanian descent, you describe feeling a degree of alienation from your relatives who were born in Lithuania or Ukraine—or who had been through the war. Is there a healthy form of displacement—at least…

Poems from 2017 issue of Vilnius Review—so grateful to Marius Burokas for publishing them! A sample:— Citizen (Lina) I braided my hair until I found a bloody stalk,yanked up with a sharp breath, as if I’d drowned. My dreams of Gediminas:        his tungsten ribcage, fangs     flashing, corpus          blown apart, singular         carbon   flecks       …

I’m so pleased to announce that my White Stockings cinepoems (with collaborator Tess Cortés) have been selected for the Newlyn Film Festival (UK). We are finalists in the poetry film category!

Very pleased to have been included in this anthology which highlights Mekas’ work as a poet from Rail Editions. Poets Respond to the Poems of Jonas Mekas Message Ahead is a companion to the collection of poetry, Words Apart and Others, featuring twenty-one distinguished poets and critics, friends and admirers, reflecting on Mekas’s pioneering contribution to contemporary…

I’ll be showing my cinepoems from White Stockings at Uncommon Ground for Sinema Obscura’s monthly film premiere nights.

I wrote this poetry book from the perspective of a daughter of displaced people & how residual effects of trauma still linger intergenerationally. My family were immigrants who had a path, yet still had no guidebook to this place called America & all of her confusing ways. The book is mainly dedicated to protecting children…

In a few weeks I will be presenting my cinepoems from White Stockings at Stanford. Many, many thanks to visual artist Tess Cortes for her vision and aesthetic. She made each woman come to life!