Aldona Gustas Berlin interview about her book “Undead”

Aldona Gustas in an interview with Vytene Saunoriute-Muschick

Aldona Gustas, Lithuanian born Berlin poet and graphic artist, continues to enjoy  high levels of  public attention and recoginition – both in Lithuania and in Germany. Throughout the year 2017 she has experienced great interest and appraisal among fellow artists and from cultural institutions in Lithuania – esp. the Lithuanian Culture Institute and Goethe Institute Lithuania, an interest which manifested itself in her inclusion in the “Lithuanian presentation at the Leipzig Bookfair” and the parallel exhibition Oxymora which joined Berlin Painter-Poets (an interdisciplinary artist group founded by her) with contemporary Lithuanian textile artists. Also, public interest in her 2-years travelling exhibition “Aldona Gustas und die Mundfrauen”, curated by Browse Gallery and financed by Goethe Institute Lithuania, arrived at a peak  when it opened at the Lithuanian National Library in Wilna earlier this year. The event was extensively covered by major Lithuanian media and till today Aldona Gustas, with her intriguiging bi-cultural biography, the strength of her personality as an independent writer and artist and the unique poetry of her lyrical and graphic works, has continued to captivate the minds of those concerned with Lithuanian culture and its relation to Germany and Europe today.

A few days ago, Aldona Gustas followed an invitation by Rita Valiuknyté, cultural attaché at the Lithuanian embassy in Berlin to meet the journalist Vytene Saunoriute-Muschick  for an interview.

With Aldona Gustas Muschick talked about her poems from the book „Untoter“ (Undead) and asked her
to recite a few of them “… the finite presents me with lasting farewells …”.
In the book Aldona Gustas deals with the death of her partner, the writer  Georg Holmsten, with whom
she had been married for nearly 60 years when he died in 2010.

The poems and the whole interview will be translated and broadcast on  Novmeber 4 in Lithuanian
national radio LRT in the show “Kultūros savaitė” (the culture week) gesendet.
The interview will also result in a contribution which will be printed in the Lithuanian magazine
“Literatūra ir menas” (literature and art) and published on November 11 2017.

While in  the embassy Aldona briefly met Darius Semaska, Lithuanian Ambassador to  Germany, who she greeted heartily.
She thanked him and Rita Valiuknyté for the hospitality and cherised Vytene Saunoriute-Muschick
for the given opportunity to talk publicly about her poetic work and a book very much dear to her heart.