Lithuanian poet, translator.
Born in Mažeikiai, she left there when she was only six months old, but returned many times to visit her aunt who lived nearby. Her father was a railwayman, and he and his family (his wife Antanina, daughter Zinaida, and twin sons Martynas and Henrikas) were often transported from place to place: from Mažeikiai to Radviliskis, from Radviliskis to Kaunas.
Zinaida started attending primary school in Kaunas. When her father was transferred from Kaunas to Šilutė, she continued her education there. Her Latvian mother used to sing Latvian songs to the little girl, while her father's elder sister, Aunt Morta Balsienė, used to follow Lithuanian fairy tales and teach her Lithuanian songs. The family also had a German literature-loving grandmother, Emilija Peters, who started reading German books to the children at a very early age.
Zina came to primary school speaking three languages: Lithuanian (her mother tongue), German and Latvian. These three languages remained almost like mother tongues for the poet throughout her life. She finished primary school in Kėdainiai, where her family survived the entire German occupation. During the war, as the Germans retreated from Lithuania, both of Zinaida's brothers fled to Germany. In July 1944, the poet and her parents fled to the West together. In 1945, she graduated from a gymnasium in Germany. She studied German literature and philosophy at the universities of Innsbruck and Freiburg. In Germany, she met her future husband, the writer Marius Katiliškis.
In 1941, she started writing, encouraged by her brother, the poet Henrikas Nagis. In her work, historical self-consciousness is revealed through the connection between the land of her birth and her personal destiny: the clash between the lost space of the self and the obligatory acceptance of the foreign space opens up an inner world of loneliness. The poetry has a strong narrative element, the poems are combined in a cycle, expanding the possibilities of poetic narration. The relationship between the word and reality is important.
His work has been published in the Lithuanian-American magazine "Metmenys", the newspaper "News", the weekly newspapers "Nepriklausoma Lietuva", "Dirva", etc. In addition to her own work, the poet also translated poetry from German and Latvian. She belongs to the so-called "behemoth" generation, the generation of unornamented language.
