Seismograph

Seismograph is the English-language edition of Marius Burokas’s award-winning Lithuanian poetry

collection, translated by Rimas Uzgiris. Developed over seven years, the book brings personal experience

into contact with the physical and emotional geography of cities and their margins. Its poems register the

tremors of everyday life alongside the growing tensions of the wider world.

In the poetry and prose poems of Seismograph, Marius Burokas, one of Lithuania’s leading poets,

measures the way the world has shaken him. From the change of the seasons to the nooks and crannies of

his native Vilnius, from family life to travels around the world, from medical emergencies to the sirens and

sorrow of Ukraine, we are left shaken and uncertain of where to find solid ground. Perhaps in the lines

themselves, the connections they express, tying us together, even as the world shivers and threatens to

fall.

— Rimas Uzgiris, translator and author of Khmelnytsky Station

The Lithuanian edition received the Writers’ Union of Lithuania Prize and was named the Most Creative

Lithuanian Book of the Year 2025.

About the author

Marius Burokas is a poet, translator and literary critic. He studied Lithuanian language and literature at

Vilnius University and is the author of five poetry collections. His work has earned him the Young

Yotvingian Prize and the Poetry Spring Maironis Prize. His poetry has been translated into numerous

languages, including English: Now I Understand was published by Parthian in the UK in 2018. His work has

also appeared in London Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review and The Brooklyn Rail. He translates primarily

from English and Ukrainian and has published more than fifty books in translation. He volunteers with the

Lithuanian Writers’ Union Literary Fund, which delivers vehicles, tactical medical supplies and equipment to

Ukrainian soldiers. He lives in Vilnius.