“China helped awaken the writer in me”
“If I were to envision my work as an action, I would see it as juggling three balls —children’s prose, children’s poetry, and poems for adults,” said Lithuanian writer and poet Evelina Daciūtė.
The well-travelled Daciūtė, a one-time resident of Beijing who now lives in the United States, is the author of 11 children’s books with one poetry book for grownups — a collection of poetry for adults entitled Žuvys fontanuose (Fish in Fountains).
What are the boundaries between these genres of children’s books and poetry for adults? Who gets to draw them? Are they existent? What does one feel when navigating between them? These are questions she still asks herself at times, she says, but she remains lucid on one key point:
“I definitely know what it is that I want to do — I want to tell stories. Whomever they’re addressed to. In the form and genre that those stories wish to be told. Poet Maya Angelou said that ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ You write and the relief comes shortly. For the time being,” she said.
And now her storytelling is in full flow, she said, speaking ahead of her appearance in the 6th EU-China International Literary Festival.
“One day I started. And I can’t stop. I am happy that I can do that with different audiences, in different genres. I can see how stories can change children’s attitude and their behavior, reading habits, etc. So it’s easy for me to motivate myself to write new stories.”
Developing narratives for children
When developing her own stories for children she feels some factors are critical, and key is that you must think about your reader while writing. “And you must believe in your story. It has to come from some place deep in you,” she said.
Additionally, a good illustrator is essential she believes. She started working with illustrator Ausra Kiudulaite while she was living in Beijing and they both fully believed in a story Daciūtė was working on called The Fox on the Swing, which ultimately became an award-winning success and was translated into several languages around the world, including Chinese, published by Beijing Qianqiu Zhiye Publishing Co. It was the right time and the right people to tell the right story, she said.
The Fox and the Swing is about happiness and friendship, she said. “It’s also about loss. We go through a lot of losses in our life. I just want children to know that you may face loss and can live on.”
Ms. Gao from Beijing Qianqiu Zhiye Publishing Co., Ltd said, “The Fox on the Swing is an impressive children’s book, a magical journey for kids. There are many thought-provoking sentences with profound meaning on happiness and friendship.”
Genre switching
As she considers the different literary genres she works in, Daciūtė feels that younger audiences can ultimately be more challenging than their adult counterparts.
“Meetings with adult readers are easier: you can be sure that even if they’re bored, the audience will calmly sit in their seats until the end, they won’t cause a racket, and nobody will attempt to do a headstand, or force you to do one,” she said.
It is important to develop readers from a very early age, she believes. “Show them different books with different stories and different illustrations. You have to help reveal the breadth and depth of children’s literature.”
If she comes across an occasional reluctant young reader she will “agitate them, read to them… show them different books, read them poetry, help them to find their authors, their books,” she said.
While people on the outside sometimes see switching between genres as being a major transition for a writer, for her on the inside she feels it is fundamentally familiar and somewhat similar terrain, comparing the change to a violinist who is choosing to play either Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker or Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and they “do not make much of a distinction between the two.”
Writer’s block
While the international success of The Fox on the Swing was very welcome, it had its own dark side for her as a writer for a while — in the aftermath she had a touch of writer’s block and couldn’t write for some time.
“I tried assembling new works for children, but they did not stick, it seemed like they paled in comparison to the original book. Now I understand that I had put too much pressure on myself and set the standard too high,” she said, adding that at the same time she and her family had moved to a new country.
“This experience posed new challenges and stress, but it also gave me a lot of time for myself and the possibility to view my own life from the side, as if it were somebody else’s. A wave of poems soon followed. These poems emerged from the deep and painful recesses of my mind. Not the kind of place you’d like to put yourself in, not the kind of place where children’s poetry is born, but the kind that makes you scared — the place you’d rather avoid, but once you’re in it, you’ll emerge as a different person.”
Step by step, new and different works came into being. They, together with a portion of her earlier poems, are laid out in the book Žuvys fontanuose, which will be published in the fall by the publishing house Dvi tylos.
My time in Beijing
Daciūtė lived in Beijing from 2011-2015 and looks back on her time in the city very warmly, and feels it certainly helped form her as a writer.
“I loved living in Beijing. Different culture, warm people, rich culture. I even learnt some survival Chinese,” she said, adding that just about the only thing she did not like was the air pollution which was high at the time.
“I just loved the time I spent in Beijing. I miss it. One of my children was born there. The birthplace in her passport is Beijing, China.”
She started to write while living in China and has developed some stories for kids about bears adapted from Chinese stories.
“I am quite sure that China helped to awaken the writer in me,” she said.