The poet and prose writer Jūratė Sučylaitė was in residence at the International Centre for Translators and Writers for an Individual Creative Residency.
During the residency, the writer sought to get away from the rhythm of the city and focus more on developing a new creative idea. Sučylaitė shares her thoughts on how she was able to take advantage of Nida’s revitalising power for the creative senses during her residency:
“Nida has always attracted me: it is not only a comfortable place for artistic creation, but also a space for inner renewal. Life, when I don’t have to get on a bus several times a day to go to the university, hospital, library or the seaside, when the lagoon is right there, silent or whispering mysteriously, and when I stop at the Parnidis dune, the blue expanse of the sky and the water glows with new shades every moment, brings back to me my own creative self: the joy of exploration, of observation, of oneness with the forest and the sea, of looking at what is indestructible and protectable. In Nida, I like to see the blue ribbons of dawn over the lagoon in the mornings, to say hello to the rising sun, and in the evenings, to say goodbye to the sun by the sea or on the dunes of Parnidis. When I say hello and goodbye to the sun, I discover the day as a spiritual mystery, not as a period of time during which we have to do this or that work. In Nida, nature takes me away from my desk, but nurtures me as a creator. The spiritual life of man and his relationship with reality is always of concern to me. We live in a world of ecological threats, of wars, of the collapse of civilisation, of apocalyptic moods. What should we look for: to find ways of escaping from the painful reality, or to see the totality of life and be responsible for what your eyes emit, what words you say? This is the problem that led me to start writing a dystopian, historical novel. The beginning is there, there is still a lot of work to do. I didn’t use all my time for writing prose and walking around: while I was in a creative residency, I got a layout of my poetry book “Werewolf”, and I proofread it.”
Applications are open for the TVRC Individual Creative Residency in the cold season! Read more about it HERE
