About

Lina Ramona Vitkauskas Canadian-American-Lithuanian b.1973

Award-winning video poet/poet. Video poems—and/or visual art derived from her video poems—have placed as a finalist or screened in the following international video poetry festivals (or have been featured in/at):

Film Video Poetry Society (Los Angeles)

Octopus Film Festival (Gdansk, Poland)

John Gagné Contemporary Gallery (Toronto):

– Post-Future Era with Kunel Gaur, Justin Neely, and Confusions (Ben Turner)

– STORY/book with Matthew Brown, M.S. Cohen, Charles Hackbarth, Jennifer Herbert, Matt James, Vince Mancuso, Adam Reich, and Laura Thipphawong

International Migration & Environmental Film Festival (Canada)

Phonotheque: Nature & Culture Video Poem Festival (Denmark)

Vienna Poetry Film Festival (Austria)

Pamenar Press (UK)

Festival Fotogenia (Mexico City)

Video poems based upon chapbook, White Stockings (2015-2019); collaboration with visual artist, Tess Cortés

MOCA (Toronto)

As part of Jeffrey Gibson’s public installation/archive, “I AM YOUR RELATIVE”

OCAD (Toronto)

Private Lives

KHôRA

As part of Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing

Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies Conference (Stanford University)

Video poems based upon chapbook, White Stockings (2015-2019); collaboration with visual artist, Tess Cortés

Cyberarts Gallery (Boston)

Collaboration with AR visual artist, Michael Lewy

Chicago Filmmakers

Video poems based upon chapbook, White Stockings (2015-2019); collaboration with visual artist, Tess Cortés

Newlyn Film Festival (UK)

Paper Knives (Curated by Nicholas Ravinkar)

International Video Poetry Festival (Greece)

Art-Lit-Lab’s Video Poetry Festival (Madison, WI, US)

Cadence Video Poetry Film Festival (Seattle, US)

Moving Poems

Mutable Sound

Ready Freddy Film Festival (Chicago, US)

Video poems based upon chapbook, White Stockings (2015-2019); collaboration with visual artist, Tess Cortés

Ex-Puritan

Video poems based upon chapbook, White Stockings (2015-2019); collaboration with visual artist, Tess Cortés

BOOKS

The Deaf Forest of Cosmic Scaffolding (above/ground press, 2025)

PRVSLY RECRDED (Secret Airplanes Press, 2025)

HALLUCINATIONS (limited run chapbook, Secret Airplanes Press, 2024)

LINES OF DEMARCATION (JackPine Press, 2022)

Between Plague & Kleptocracy: Invented Poetic Creations & Conversations of Seva & Bill (Secret Airplanes Press, 2021)

Ministry of Foreign Affairs • MOFA (Secret Airplanes Press, 2018)

White Stockings (White Hole Press, 2016-2019)

SPINY RETINAS (Mutable Sound, 2014)

Professional Poetry (White Hole Press, 2013)

A Neon Tryst (Shearsman Books, UK, 2013)

HONEY IS A SHE (Plastique Press, e-pub, 2012)

THE RANGE OF YOUR AMAZING NOTHING (Ravenna Press, 2010) – Out of print

Failed Star Spawns Planet/Star (dancing girl press, 2006) – Out of print

Shooting Dead Films with Poets (Fractal Edge Press, 2004) – Out of print

AWARDS & FEATURES

2020

PEN America Relief Grant recipient

2019

Essay featured in Message Ahead: Poets Respond to the Poems of Jonas Mekas (Rail Editions –Brooklyn Rail, and anthology dedicated to poetry of Lithuanian filmmaker and Anthology Film Archives founder, Jonas Mekas

Voice-over narration for independent documentary film, George: The Story of George Mačiunas & Fluxus (Director Jeffrey Perkins); featuring Yoko Ono, Vyt Bakaitis, and others; screened at MoMA, Amsterdam, London, Vilnius

Nominated by Spoon River Poetry Review, Illinois Arts Council Award – Poetry

2018

Participant, inaugural World Lithuanian Writers’ Forum, featured in forum anthology; presented by the Lithuanian World Community Organization, the Lithuanian Writers’ Union, and the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore

2013

Henry Miller Memorial Library Ping Pong Journal Award – Selected by Eleni Sikelianos

2009

The Poetry Center of Chicago’s Juried Reading Award – Selected by Brenda Hillman

Nominated, Another Chicago Magazine, Illinois Arts Council Award – Short Fiction

2000

M.A., Creative Writing, Wright State University | Participated in summer workshop with Nikky Finney, the 2012 National Book Award Winner – Poetry

TITLES & POSITIONS

Chicago Poetry Correspondent for OmniVerse

Faculty member & marketing manager for the Chicago School of Poetics (2008)

Co-editor/designer, milk magazine, the 20+ year-running online literary magazine, featuring Robert Creeley, Wanda Coleman, Ron Padgett, Michael McClure, and Japanese surrealist, Yamamoto Kansuke, among others

15+ year reader, co-curator, collaborator, co-founder, organizer/facilitator, contest judge, and instructor in Chicago’s poetry community

READING SERIES & PROJECTS

▪ Balzekas Lithuanian Museum

▪ Woman Made Gallery

▪ Chicago Public Radio: “Chicago Amplified” & “Future Perfect + New Media”

▪ Myopic Books

▪ Quimby’s

▪ Danny’s Reading Series

▪ Red Rover @OUTER SPACE

▪ Series A

▪ Wĭt Rabbit

▪ Dollhouse Reading Series

▪ 100K Poets for Change

▪ HUMAN MICROPOEM at Occupy Chicago

▪ Discrete Reading Series (University of Chicago-affiliated)

▪ Around the Coyote

▪ Evanston Public Library

Currently the co-curator of the milk magazine reading series in Toronto at Type Books with partner, Larry Sawyer.

PUBLICATIONS

The Fortnightly Review, Vilnius Review, The Prague Literary Review, White Fungus (Taiwan), Ping Pong (Henry Miller Literary Journal), The Chicago Review, KHORA, Pamenar Press Magazine (UK), The Ex-Puritan, VLAK (Ed. Louis Armand, Edmund Berrigan), Berfrois, Resist Much / Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil, 2017), Rain Taxi, VIDA, Dusie, Tarpaulin Sky, Rampike (Volume 14:1; University of Windsor), The Toronto Quarterly, Echolocation (University of Toronto), Yalla (Montreal), Another Chicago Magazine (#48), Emergency Index (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), Aufgabe, Van Gogh’s Ear (Paris), Paper Tiger (Australia), Atticus Review, Matter, Mystic Owl, Schlag, Deathcap (Coven Editions), the tiny, Shock of Femme, Human Repair Kit, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Conversant, New City, Big Bridge, The Awl, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books, 2007), POETBOOK, Spork, Coconut, TriQuarterly (Northwestern University), Requited, DIAGRAM, Delirious Hem (Chick Flix Series, Ed. Jennifer L. Knox), Sharkforum (2006, 2010), RHINO, Delirious Hem (2011 Audio Advent Calendar, Ed. Susanna Gardner, dusie), MiPoesias, Moria, In Posse Review Multi-Ethnic Anthology (Ed. Ilya Kaminsky), Bridges – The Lithuanian-American Journal After Hours Ariel, Balloon, Blossombones, Jet Fuel Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, ink & ashes, Ambulant, Anemone Sidecar, Drunken Boat, Aught, LocusPoint, 5-Trope, canwehaveourballback?, Cokefish, 3 A.M., Hubris, JACK, La Petite Zine, Melancholia’s Tremulous Dreadlocks, Newtopia, No Tell Motel (1, 2, 3, 4), The Onion Union, The Outlet, Shampoo, PFS Post, Seven Corners, Sidereality, Snow Monkey, Starfish, Unpleasant Event Schedule (Ed. Daniel Nester), Tin Lustre Mobile, ZuZu’s Petals, UniVerse: A United Nations of Poetry (Translator)

BLURBS

“…Vitkauskas’ poems combine The Handmaid’s Tale with mad science with the meaningful meaningless dialogue of politics and propaganda. While her poems are filled with wild images, they are also subtle in their devious shifts and proclamations. The dream capsules [poems] are, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens, both there and not there. Her poems are fun, soothingly frantic, and optimistically generous.” —Daniel Borzutzky, Griffin Poetry Prize (International Shortlist, 2019) & US National Book Award Winner

“Splendid, grotesque, violent, but always loving, Vitkauskas writes like a contemporary Marina Tsvetaeva through a landscape of the uncertain and surreal…” —Sandra Simonds, author of Assia (Noemi Press) & Triptychs (Wave Books); Winner of the Akron Poetry Prize

“You’ve discovered / invented a unique new kind of mode in the cinepoem genre — bravo…your method in writing the ‘film ekphrastics’ is unique, innovative, and I’ve never read of anyone else doing it before you…”

—Bill Knott, Winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; author of The Naomi Poems (1968)

“If film is linear, the ultimate time-based medium, during which we are supposed to listen and watch attentively, passively, Vitkauskas’ poems talk back. These poems create simultaneity, layers, and distillations toward new narrative logics…Vitkauskas is watching for the poem in the film, writing her own, deliciously peculiar subtitles and in their irreverence, they are expansive, wise, and sometimes very funny. Her playful gestures in the face of the tightly choreographed imprint of film create incidental and embodied new texts, and this may very well be a feminist enterprise in its daring, toppling film’s male gaze with ‘I have to half you. ’ ” —Jill Magi, author of LABOR (Nightboat Books) & SIGN CLIMACTERIC (Hostile Books)

“The ‘trysts’ of Vitkauskas’ book are shot through with ‘neon’…saturated with chemicals, textures, atmosphere, and media. According to this synthetic cosmology, ‘In an affair/ arms laugh, /they become sheer. ’…arms, bodies, weapons, trysts—become both medium and adjective, both see-through and material. As in Antonioni’s great films, the body is clothes and the clothes are part of the visual atmosphere. A dress moves through a toxic landscape, and the ‘trysts’ are movies, fantasies, art. Vitkauskas is ‘surreal, primitive, impressionist, whatever. ’ ”

—Johannes Göransson, author of The Sugar Book (Tarpaulin Sky); co-editor, Action Books / Action, Yes

“…her poems possess the intricate peculiarity of honeycombs and Schiaparelli dresses…she exquisitely fashions verse out of scientific particulars, cinematic references, and metaphors’ associative logic. Vitkauskas is fearless as she navigates, interrogates, and ultimately, dislocates conventional gender dynamics: ‘I rip the itch from gender.’ The dynamism, humor, and marvel of her poems recall the surrealist Joyce Mansour, conveying a similar tenor as they negotiate desire and disease, ardor and animosity…” —Simone Muench, Suture (Black Lawrence Press); Illinois Arts Council Finalist

“…richly textured and layered, a palimpsest pleasure…Ashbery and Superman, Lorca and Jacqueline Bisset, Nancy (the comic strip character) and Forrest Gander all coexist and inform her amazing verse. While the bright surface of her poetry employs humour and kitsch, the dazzling underside confronts intolerance and terrorism with a wise brilliance.”

—Denise Duhamel, Guest Editor, Best American Poetry

“…a Cyrillic voyeur penning captions for a movie that knows its own democracy…a run of great poems made by great lines, a sequence of gracious acts in which Vitkauskas drops names like Galileo dropped the orange…”

—Chuck Stebelton, Winner, Tougher Disguises Jack Spicer Award