Keeping Up With The Huidobros • (New Cinepoem, 2021)

https://vimeo.com/512335102 It began with Chilean poet, Vincente Huidobro. The opening / preface of his poetic masterpiece, Altazor, launches into a metaphysical cascade of imagery. This was exciting to a young poet like me—at age 29 with some Spanish knowledge and seeking a manifesto to climb (the name “altazor” is a combination of the noun “altura”…… Continue reading Keeping Up With The Huidobros • (New Cinepoem, 2021)

“…like a contemporary Tsvetaeva through a landscape of the uncertain and surreal…”

“Splendid, grotesque, violent, but always loving, Lina ramona writes like a contemporary Marina Tsvetaeva through a landscape of the uncertain and surreal; the language is made from the nervousness and energy of every bee in the hive. Part ‘rotten aorta’ and part ‘snapdragon wine’, the poems in HONEY IS A SHE form a buzzing network…… Continue reading “…like a contemporary Tsvetaeva through a landscape of the uncertain and surreal…”

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SELECTED! 9th International Video Poetry Festival • Athens, Greece (2021)

I AM THRILLED to have 5 of my short-short cinepoems selected for the 9th International Video Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece in March 2021 The International Video Poetry Festival is organized and promoted by the Institute for Experimental Arts in cooperation with Void Network. Every year, the committee of the Institute for Experimental Arts selects…… Continue reading SELECTED! 9th International Video Poetry Festival • Athens, Greece (2021)

“…she combines Handmaid’s Tale & mad science with the meaningful meaningless dialogue of politics & propaganda…”

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Daniel Borzutzky, 2016 National Book Award Winner (Poetry): “It is strange to occupy the world of Lina ramona Vitkauskas’ poems, a world where beef takes nebulous forms, Jacques Derrida and Batman speculatively coincide, where cumin forms into fists, where W.H. Auden sets things on fire, while Sartre cowboys ride into a present tense that combines…… Continue reading “…she combines Handmaid’s Tale & mad science with the meaningful meaningless dialogue of politics & propaganda…”

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Poets • (New Cinepoem, 2020) – Featured on Moving Poems.com

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…… Continue reading Poets • (New Cinepoem, 2020) – Featured on Moving Poems.com

“…a Cyrillic voyeur penning captions for a movie that knows its own democracy…”

“Lina ramona’s chapbook, Shooting Dead Films with Poets, is an improbable treasure. These fourteen poems call out to Cocteau and draw from the gamut spanning Georgic bees and a Chicago found to be antipodal to the Volga. Subtitles twine immaculately. They invoke a Cyrillic voyeur penning captions for a movie that knows its own democracy.…… Continue reading “…a Cyrillic voyeur penning captions for a movie that knows its own democracy…”

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Scarcely Gilded • (New Cinepoem, 2020)

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…… Continue reading Scarcely Gilded • (New Cinepoem, 2020)

Push <> Pull • New Cinepoem (2020)

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…… Continue reading Push <> Pull • New Cinepoem (2020)

“…a Pynchon-esque bend…images of films translated into other tongues…languages we don’t speak or might not exist….”

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“It’s a book of codes and lost histories, grainy film stock and the harder-to-catch frequencies, and there’s a Pynchon-esque bend to the work overall, a sense that the images of these films are being translated into other tongues, maybe even languages we don’t speak ourselves, languages that might not exist. There’s a gap between the…… Continue reading “…a Pynchon-esque bend…images of films translated into other tongues…languages we don’t speak or might not exist….”

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Finalist! Cinepoems at Festival Fotogenia, Mexico City

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…… Continue reading Finalist! Cinepoems at Festival Fotogenia, Mexico City

Nominated! IL Arts Council, Two Poems from MOFA

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…… Continue reading Nominated! IL Arts Council, Two Poems from MOFA

Uncovering Old Projects • ÜMWELT

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…… Continue reading Uncovering Old Projects • ÜMWELT

Finalist! Cinepoems at Ready Freddy Film Festival

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. 

Interview, The Conversant (with Virginia Konchan)

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…… Continue reading Interview, The Conversant (with Virginia Konchan)

Poems, Vilnius Review

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          Lupus*-born.I severed…… Continue reading Poems, Vilnius Review