SHU Professor Emeritus Nominated for Lithuanian Award

Jonas Zdanys has published 56 books over the course of his career

Sacred Heart University professor emeritus and poet-in-residence Jonas Zdanys has been nominated for the Lithuanian National Prize in Culture & the Arts. He has published 56 books and translated 22 books from Lithuanian into English.

The Lithuanian National Prize in Culture & the Arts has been awarded annually since 1989. Lithuanian creators are nominated for their long-lasting work, creativity and significant achievements in culture and the arts. The Lithuanian Writers’ Society board nominated Zdanys, and he will know in December if he has won the award.

While honored for the recognition, Zdanys said acknowledgement has never been his motivation. “I have never worked toward any awards or prizes in my career; that has never been on my mind,” said Zdanys. “I have always just been interested in the art and work itself.”

Zdanys wrote his most recent book, The Mirror at the Top of the Stairs, in the galleries of the New Britain Museum of American Art, which is significant because he grew up in New Britain. He visited the museum as a member of the Connecticut Poetry Society and felt inspired by the work displayed there.

His latest book is a collection of lyrical, narrative poems about the museum pieces. A description on Amazon says the poems “are not just commentaries on the framed works in those galleries. They are, most essentially, expressions of the poet’s commitment to hear and to extend the stories those paintings tell, and to do so by creating parallel texts in these pages—paintings in words that absorb and expand the paintings in pigments.”

One of Zdanys’ other notable works is entitled The Angled Road and is a collection of all the poems he has published in English throughout the past 50 years. One of the main themes in the book is the idea of self-actualization situated in the contexts of positive, life-affirming tension while also acknowledging human struggle. The book was published in 2020 and it has a total of 628 poems. 

Zdanys was a SHU English professor for 13 years and said he thoroughly enjoyed working with Sacred Heart’s “wonderful and creative students.” He is grateful to have had the opportunity to share his passion for poetry and storytelling with Sacred Heart students.