**Tomas Venclova** (born 1937 in Klaip?da) is a poet, translator, literary scholar, and essayist. In 1960, he graduated from the Faculty of Lithuanian Philology at Vilnius University. He worked at the Institute of History and taught at Vilnius University. In 1976, he joined the Lithuanian Helsinki Group. In 1977, he emigrated to the United States. Since 1980, he has been a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University in New Haven. He was awarded the Lithuanian National Prize in 2000. Drawing together the legacies of Western and Russian poetry with the Lithuanian tradition, Tomas Venclova has created a distinctive voice that speaks to readers across many countries.