Weiße Schatten / White Shadows

Christian Loidl in the forward says:

Lidija Šimkute's poetry is elemental. . . Her language does not exhaust itself in mere representation nor does it dissolve into the formless. Her poetry moves on the border of disappearance, like a Buto dancer above an abyss. The poems strike faster than thought. Like totems, masks, and like cyclical, non-linear vocal music of Lithuania, they evoke a world which is ancient,yet young and utterly vivid. They do without wordplay, idiosyncracy, and extravaganza. They are esssences and formulas.

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Šimkute’s language is a subtle instrument of emotional nuance. . . She has been living in Australia since her childhood, her first books of poetry were written in Lithuanian. She has cherished Lithuanian culture as almost a mythical reference. . . Šimkute’s poetry possesses a form of polyvalence that is found in mystical language. The physical cannot be clearly segregated from the metaphysical; one may signify the other. Equally open are the boundaries between the individual and nature:

. . . the imagination truly touches upon a beginning, an openness, something that remains unhampered by the usual:

It may be safely assumed that, in addition to Šimkute’s Lithuanian roots, it was the expansiveness of the Australian continent that has imprinted itself profoundly onto her work, instilling luminosity and space. . .

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