The Cordite Poetry Review is a non-profit online journal of poetry review and criticism. The journal recently released three translated poems of contemporary poet and playwright Péter Závada, the son of the well-known Hungarian writer, Pál Závada. Péter Závada’s first collection of poems, titled “Ahol Megszakad”, was published in 2012, and he proved his talent at slam-poetry events in the past, and his writings are often published in local literary journals. His poems have so far been translated into English, German, and Romanian. Péter Závada also translates musicals, he has been actively working as a playwright and dramaturgue since 2010, and he is one of the founders of the Hungarian underground hip-hop-rap band, Akkezdet Phiai.
The three translated poems are taken from Závada’s second collection of poems, “Mész” (2015); the translator Mark Baczoni referred to them as emotional and melancholic works. The Budapest-born translator was raised in London, and studied in Cambridge and Budapest. He translates both prose and poetry from Hungarian and French. Péter Závada’s three poems, titled “But Nothing”, “Humming”, and “Mortar” (“Mész” in Hungarian) – which is the eponymous poem of Závada's second collection – were released in Mark Baczoni’s translation in 2015. You can read the poems in English and in Hungarian here.
