Belarus Poet to Speak at Butler

Valzhyna Mort (right) will speak at 7:30 p.m. 27 March in the Krannert Room of Clowes Memorial Hall as part of Butler University's spring 2008 Vivian S. Delbrook Visiting Writers Series. According to Blue Flower Arts, "Valzhyna Mort was born Valzhyna Martynava in 1981 in Minsk, Belarus. At 26, as a poet and translator, her work has been translated into many European languages, the most recent being a book in Swedish, released in 2007. She has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies, including an Anthology of Belarusian Poetry (Sofia, 2002). Her first Book, Factory of Tears, is forthcoming by Copper Canyon Press in the spring of 2008, co-translated with Franz Wright. Valzhyna is famed throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances, which display a talent not normally associated with one so young. She is the winner of several poetry competitions in Belarus, and in 2004 she received the Crystal of Velenica Award in Slovenia, which is awarded for reading performance. Valzhyna’s first collection, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes (2005), is startlingly assured and reveals a powerful poetic voice. She is the 2005 recipient of the Gaude Polonia stipendium. In 2006 she was a poet-in-residence at Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Germany. She currently lives in the United States. Valzhyna writes in Belarusian at a time when efforts are being made to reestablish the traditional language, after governmental attempts to absorb it into the Russian language have been relinquished. She reads her poems aloud in both Belarusian and English.