Poet Laureate’s News
May 1, 2026
Greetings, poetry community.
This month, I thought I would share some thoughts about my practice of translating contemporary Lithuanian poetry.
I believe it serves as a positive gesture when members of the United States poetry community reach out in friendship across oceans to show we are a nation of more than just bluster and bombs. To my way of thinking, the idea of America First, taken to the extreme, denies the contributions made to our lives by other cultures. We are a nation of immigrants.
Lithuanians, including my grandfather on my mother’s side, emigrated to the United States in great numbers in several phases, including two hundred thousand or more between 1865 and 1915. Lithuania at the time was part of the Russian Empire, a time when native Lithuanians were discriminated against and the best paying jobs were given to colonists from Russia. My grandfather was born in a small village named Zanovesci by the Russians, now called Užunvėžiai
My gesture of reaching out to the nation of Lithuania is rooted in my heritage. My interest in reading and translating contemporary Lithuanian poetry began as a search to find what our cultures have in common. Maybe I was lucky in terms of the poets I have chosen to translate, but I have been deeply moved by both the voices of the poets and the subject matter of their poems.
Marija Mazule is the fourth Lithuanian poet whose poems I have translated. Marija is a poet and literary organizer. Her debut poetry book, Fosilijos yra nėriniai (Fossils Are Lace, 2023), was longlisted for the national Book of the Year in Lithuania. She is currently working on her second collection. My translations of three of Marija’s poems were recently published in The Los Angeles Review. I found the poems in the online Lithuanian literary journal known as Siaures Atenai (translated as Athens of the North). Following is my translation of Marija’s poem “Forma yra tuštuma” (translated as “Form is Emptiness”):
Form is Emptiness
I wrote to you that love’s
empty space
demands abundance
perceptual excess
I wrote to you that the rose
is now a rhododendron
that poems are carbon monoxide
residue
but faces are merely forms
and again we meet up
in a darkened room
with a view to a traffic circle
possible to leave
any which way
but we only rotate
and watch how around the Earth
the satellites circle
all through the night
it doesn’t matter
which one
will depart first
because everything is circular
once upon a time I wrote
love is emptiness
then still I never imagined
what comes after
Only after I had translated the above poem did I learn that Marija‘s father is a well-known Lithuanian musician who composed a choral piece with the same title: Form is Emptiness. Those who are interested may find the translations of the three poems by Marija (as well as the poems in the source Lithuanian) here. losangelesreview.org/three-poems-by-marija-mazule-translated-by-dave-seter/
This month, I have no specific planned poet laureate events, but I will be attending various readings and open mics throughout Sonoma County. My laureateship comes to an end soon, and I look forward to welcoming the new laureate into their role celebrating and promoting poetry in Sonoma County.
As a reminder, writing prompts from my poet laureate project, as well as other content (such as the list of poems read at the recent Favorite Poems Event at SebArts) can be found at: daveseter.com/poet-laureate-project
Dave Seter
Sonoma County Poet Laureate 2024-2026
dssocolaureate@gmail.com
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Archives of previous Poet Laureate columns may be found here for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016-2017, 2018-2020, 2020-2022, 2022-2024 and 2024-2026.
Sonoma County Literary Update 