Mindaugas Valiukas

Poet, playwright, screenwriter, singer of original songs. His first poems were published in 1991 in the youth magazine “Moksleivis”. In the twelfth grade he won the Republican Competition of Young Philologists in the poetry section, in 1996 he became a laureate of the P. Lembert Competition, in 1999 his first collection of poetry “Mėnulio keramika” was awarded the first prize for the best debut of the year was the Z. Gaidamavičius-Gėlė Prize. Later, he published collections of poems “Vogta nainis” (2003), “Dambrelis” (2006), and in 2005 he published a collection of plays “Kreatyvo smrtis” (Death of a Creator). Valiukas is close to poetic speaking from a playful, non-committal distance, but with a penetrating existential concern. “Humour, which in the classical literary epochs provided an opportunity to relax from the “raised voice” of high literature, allows the author to “invert” the prevailing attitudes in writing. Only – paradoxically – in this case, such a reversal brings back existential – “serious” – themes, and allows us to talk about them without subversive passion and negative pathos” (Brigita Speičytė).