Kazys Bradūnas

Kazys Bradūnas (February 11, 1917 – February 9, 2009) was a Lithuanian émigré poet and editor. He was born in Kiršai, in the Lithuania District of Ober Ost, a territory occupied by the German Empire.

He graduated from Vilnius University where he studied Lithuanian language and literature. During the post-war period he lived in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. In 1944 Bradūnas emigrated to the U.S., and lived in Baltimore and Chicago. In 1995 he returned to Lithuania and then lived in the capital, Vilnius, until his death.

Bradūnas edited literary and cultural journals Literatūros lankai, Aidai and the Saturday cultural supplement of the Lithuanian daily Draugas in Chicago.

He was one of the most virile émigré editors of collective works on poetry and literature. Bradūnas together with the literature critic and professor of Ohio State University, Rimvydas Šilbajoris, edited an anthology Lietuvių egzodo literatūra, 1940–1990 (Literature of Lithuanian Exodus, 1940–1990) published in Chicago, 1992.

Bradūnas was one of the founders of the "Žemė" (Earth) literary movement and one of the editors of the same name anthology published in 1951 in Los Angeles. The participants of the "Žemė" anthology were Kazys Bradūnas, Juozas Kėkštas, Vytautas Mačernis (post-humously), Henrikas Nagys, Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas.

The movement was advocating Lithuanian poetry with distinct roots in the earth, drawing its strength from Lithuania's agricultural heritage and folklore. "They fused the Lithuanian spirit with the pathos of the modern world's poetic forms and, it can be said, laid the foundation for the modern poetry to be written later in Lithuania" ([1]) (per Kornelijus Platelis).

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