Fiona Sampson

Sam Riviere

Clare Pollard

Polly Clark

George Gömöri

John Mole

Carol Rumens

Attila József

Derek Adams

John McAuliffe

Wayne Holloway-Smith

Tom Warner

Anthony Dunn

Jacqueline Gabbitas

Ágnes Lehóczky

Tim Liardet

The Balassi Institute Hungarian Cultural Centre London launched its new project ‘Inspired by Hungarian poetry: British poets in conversation with Attila József’ in celebration of the Hungarian Culture Day on 22 January 2013. On 22 January 1823 Ferenc Kölcsey – one of the most important literary fi gures in Hungarian history – completed his manuscript of the Hungarian National Anthem. Since 1989 Hungarian culture is celebrated on this day. To mark this special event, the Balassi Institute Hungarian Cultural Centre London invited British poets to contribute to its new project with a poem of their own written in response to the poems of the Hungarian poet Attila József (1905-1937). The original idea of the ‘British poets in conversation with Attila József ’ project came from Tibor Fischer, the internationally renowned British writer of Hungarian origin. The aim of the project is to raise awareness and appreciation of Hungarian poetry among readers in the UK through initiating a poetic conversation between renowned British poets and selected poems of the outstanding Hungarian poet Attila József. The Hungarian Cultural Centre asked British poets to respond to a selection of Attila József’s poems in English translation, put into English beautifully by John Bátki, Edwin Morgan, George Szirtes and Peter Zollman. The present online anthology, published on 11 April 2013 – the birthday of Attila József and the National Poetry Day in Hungary – is the product of the poetic ‘conversation’ between Attila József and more than a dozen of his present-day British counterparts. A gala reading in London on 11 April 2013 celebrates the occasion of the launch of the anthology, Attila József’s work and poetry.

British poets in conversation with Attila József

Inspired by Hungarian poetry

Miklos Zrinyi

Part chronicle of war, part theological treatise, this poem also has episodes of romance and adventure, as each side is at once humanized and made larger than life.

The Siege of Sziget

This present collection of George Gömöri’s essays covers several centuries of Polish literature and its reception abroad. The first three essays are devoted to Jan Kochanowski, the greatest poet of the Polish Renaissance, followed by shorter pieces on Stefan Batory, King of Poland from 1576 to 1586, whom Montaigne thought to be ‘one of the greatest princes of our age’. This is followed by a comparative essay on the Pole Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński and the Hungarian poet Bálint Balassi, both important poets of the late sixteenth century, and an essay with an Amendment, investigating Sir Philip Sidney’s little-researched visits to Hungary and Poland. A substantial part of the book is devoted to the Baroque period, first on the poet Hieronim Morsztyn, recently rediscovered in Poland. A long essay analyses his first important work, Worldly Delights, a poem which illustrates the transition from the classical models of the late Renaissance to Baroque poetics. The following part of the book examines the huge impact that the neo-Latin poet Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski made on more than one English poet of the seventeenth-century, while also explaining the political reasons for his warm reception in England. “The Verse Letter of the Polish Baroque” follows the development of this interesting genre from Daniel Naborowski to Jan Andrzej Morsztyn. The final part of the book deals with the great precursor of modern Polish poetry, Cyprian Norwid (1821–1883). The final essays in this collection investigate Norwid’s views on Lord Byron, expressed both in his poetry and his public lectures in Paris, as well as the complex views of the Polish poet on nineteenth-century England, which he only briefly visited, and the United States where he resided for two years.

Essays on Polish and Comparative Literature from Kochanowski to Norwid

The Polish Swan Triumphant

George Gömöri

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