Grove of the Eumenides

With The Grove of the Eumenides, the Lithuanian poet Tomas Venclova affirms his place as one of Europe’s greatest living poets, the heir to Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Miłosz. Venclova’s masterful poetry upholds a vision of the world that enables us to endure the darkness of our time through his singular insights, ethical endurance and profound compassion. With classical grace, yet manifesting a deep commitment to remain a witness to the contemporary world, The Grove of the Eumenides is a collection of great wisdom.

Venclova’s poetry addresses the desolate landscape of the aftermath of totalitarianism, as well as the ethical constants that allow for hope and perseverance. Bloodaxe published another selection of his poetry, The Junction, in 2008, bringing together new translations of his most recent work from that time as well as a selection of poems from his 1997 volume Winter Dialogue.

While The Junction covered poems written while he was still in Lithuania before his forced emigration – and poems from his first decades in the US dealing with exile – The Grove of the Eumenides addresses ‘later life’ issues of democracy, memory, climate, travel, ethics and ageing. There is no overlap between the two editions.

Tomas Venclova was born in 1937 in Klaipeda, Lithuania. After graduating from Vilnius University, he travelled in the Eastern Bloc, where he met and translated Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. Venclova took part in the Lithuanian and Soviet dissident movements and was one of the five founding members of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. His activities led to a ban on publishing, exile and the stripping of his Soviet citizenship in 1977. Venclova is Emeritus Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University where he taught from 1985. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Vilenica 1990 International Literary Prize, the Lithuanian National Prize in 2000, the 2002 Prize of Two Nations, which he received jointly with Czeslaw Milosz, the 2005 Jotvingiai Prize, and the New Culture of New Europe Prize, and the 2023 Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award. His works include volumes of poetry, essays, literary biography, conversations and works on Vilnius. His poetry has been translated into English in Winter Dialogue (Northwestern University Press, 1997), The Junction: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008) and The Grove of the Eumenides (Bloodaxe Books, 2025). Magnetic North: Conversations with Tomas Venclova by Ellen Hinsey was published by University of Rochester Press and Boydell & Brewer in 2017. After many years in New Haven, Connecticut, and a period spent in Kraków, he returned to Lithuania and now lives in Vilnius.