Shannan

The first images in your poems I am struck by are the birds. They appear as “a peacock’s feather” on a belly, as “foster parents”, “sparrows or pigeons”, hands resembling “red feather”, and, in one of my favorite pieces of yours – “Red” – an angel demands why the poet is writing “poems about…birds when God is dying.” Alongside flowers (tulips in particular), birds are ubiquitous in your poetry, as though many of them were swooping over your poems. Feathers and petals abound. As does color. And most of your poems are short in size yet packed with huge themes – motherhood, pain, sex, depression. I’m thinking about the softness and levity of feathers and petals, flowers and birds. How fleeting and elusive they seem. Yet how undeniably beautiful. I’d love to hear you explore a little further with me about this connection in your poetic themes and the images that predominate within your poetic landscapes.

Réka

In my biography I state that I am “a spell, a sparrow, a lioness's tongue — a bird’s nest in a pool of dusk.” It is a bold and surreal statement, equating to “if you can imagine it, then it will happen”. In a sense, that’s my mantra.

AAAAFor me, the act of writing poetry is a form of world making. Through my poems I both remake my past and also cast a spell on my future. I am practicing a kind of surreal myth-making and foretelling. 

AAAAAs a child I longed to be either a witch or bird: poetry affords an alternative landscape for all my unlived selves.

AAAAConcerning colors, I try to write as a painter would paint. I have an affinity for red, blue and yellow. Maybe by painting with words, I am compensating for an, as yet, unfulfilled desire to paint. But it is never too late - I began writing poems at forty-one, starting ‘small’ with haiku. I deliberately chose not to write in Hungarian, my mother tongue, nor in Romanian, my second language, but in English, my third language. The inherent constraint of this choice drew me toward short forms: haiku, cherita, haibun, prose poems.

Karan

That’s fascinating, Réka, and makes a lot of sense! Would you speak more about why you made this deliberate choice? English isn’t my first language either, but I chose to write in it because I was ignorant and thought it was the language of poetry. Last week, we interviewed Myriam Klatt, who told us she started writing poetry in English even though her first language is German. Do you also find that certain emotions or nuances are more accessible or expressible in English compared to Hungarian or Romanian? Have you written poetry (or prose) in those languages before? What is the difference for you in writing in the languages you grew up with, and writing in English? I’ve tried writing in Hindi, but it doesn’t work for me. But I enjoy translating when I’m unable to produce my own work. Are you concerned with translation?

Réka

The truth is that in elementary school I wrote several verses in Hungarian. Seeking validation, I sent them to Napsugár (Sunray) - a magazine for children. To my surprise they were accepted for publication. I sent more and they were also accepted. However, I coped badly with my first rejection and stopped writing altogether. I haven't written anything in Hungarian since. In fact, I now use my mother tongue very rarely. I speak Romanian at work and also with my family. English, my third language, is reserved exclusively for poetry and dreams. 

AAAARegarding translation - I attempted to translate my poems from English into Romanian, but I was dissatisfied with the end result. I had the feeling that my poems somehow lost their essence during the process. Nowadays, I often think about writing a novel. When I start, it will most likely be written in Romanian. I perceive the notion of time better and more precisely in the Romanian language. In my poems, I live in the present, even if I am talking about the past or the future.

Shannan

I keep returning to “Therapy”. These last lines: “how she used to laugh / and laugh… / and then cry”, tempered as they are with the ellipses feel as though they contain several poems within the one. How do you deploy elision in your work – is it an intentional, intuitive, or intellectual process? Do you find that this particular poetic device captures something about the essence of what you’re trying to communicate? These are, after all, heavy topics, so to speak. Does the act of omission and the created mystery that comes with it allow for a sense of narratorial safety, perhaps? Whether for the poet, the reader, or both?

Réka

I deploy omission intentionally. I learnt this technique by writing haiku. In haiku ‘absence’ is material — a white space. It doesn’t separate, but rather it unites. Omission lends the reader thinking space; it affords the reader an active role — to fill in that space with their own worldview, experiences and emotions. In poetry, less is often more, especially if the theme of the poem is, as you say, heavy. And yes, my topics are heavy: failed marriage, depression, unlived lives, trauma, loneliness.

Karan

I love haiku too, and am a fan of the “less is more” mantra. The shortness of your poems work so well because it invokes mystery. Consider the second-half of “Luminous Animals” — so much is happening in those 6 lines — there’s movement of time, subject, and perspective. And nothing is ever explained — we are left not confused, but stunned, mystified at what’s happened. Considering your deliberate use of omission to create space for reader engagement, how do you strike a balance between providing enough context for your themes and leaving room for interpretation? Do you ever feel you might end up leaving the reader behind if you don’t give them enough context?

Réka

Actually, when I write, I don't really think about readers. I write for myself, to better understand myself and the characters - healer, magician, teller of tales - which form an integral part of me. I create worlds to make my day to day life livable.

Shannan

You know, I didn’t immediately identify these poems as crafts of an imagist poet, yet as I returned to them again and again for this interview, I kept noticing the almost clinical way in which similar images appear to be almost strategically placed across the page again and again. “Hands” is one such image. You explore the idea of hands as not only physical tools allowing us to create, but also as conduits that can transform and be transformed or “reborn” as you write in “Woman dressed in black”. Then again, the ending of “Luminous animals” shifts its focus to a “young woman with old hands”, creating a startling dichotomy between time and beauty. Because this idea of “hand” is so deeply personal and yet clearly reaching outwards, I wonder if you write from a place of intimate affectation first and then place the reader’s experience within your words (because most definitely a poet writing with the sensitivity you are is thinking about the reader) or is it somehow magically the other way around? Or maybe neither way, a new way – I’d love to know!

Réka

Regarding being an imagist poet, again I must return to haiku as it is a form in which images are dominant, - many haiku contain two images, that are either compared, or contrasted or associated.

a twig

without its crow-

unburdened heart

(Réka Nyitrai, Otata, Issue 37)

where the dove tamer hangs his traps summer cloud

(Réka Nyitrai, NOON: journal of the short poem, Issue 15)   

trees fruiting boulders the year pigs eat strawberries

(Réka Nyitrai, weird laburnum, 2019) 

AAAAConcerning the recurring image of (my) hands, I have to confess that I have a love-hate relationship with them. A manicurist once told me that I had the hands of a child. I was pleased with the compliment. But recently my right hand started to lose the battle with ageing and I confess that this saddens me. 

AAAAI am also clumsy and incompetent at most forms of manual labor. My hands’ lack of skills embarrasses me. But ultimately it is the process of ageing, and ultimately death, that most terrifies me. I suppose this is why I am drawn to the theme of rebirth — particularly as a bird or flower. I like to imagine future identities, lives for myself as a whole entity, or for various dismembered body parts of mine. This imaginative exercise lulls my fear of death.

Karan

This too is truly fascinating, Réka. As a fellow hands-obsessed, when I think of hands, it affirms my faith in life and the universe. I feel that our hands are symptomatic of the perfection of life (human life and all other life on earth) — that we have different-sized fingers and thumbs, fingerprints and knuckles, all these lines on our palms that help us form fists…truly, our hands couldn’t be more perfect. The same goes for the rest of our bodies. And animals have perfect bodies for the habitats they inhabit. Evolution really managed everything rather perfectly. But I’m intrigued that your relationship with the idea of hands is changing now and that they even make you contemplate death. Is death an obsession for you when it comes to writing? Is it a subject you avoid, or tackle head-on? Can poetry be written without an acknowledgment of death? 

Réka

Like anyone who struggles with depression, I live with the proximity of death. I read and write poems to overpower gloom. For me poems have healing powers. To some extent I write in order to overcome the nearness of death. Every time I complete a poem, whatever its merits, I feel resurrected. I'm truly happy only when I'm writing.

Shannan

Speaking of magic, I think one of the most magical pieces I’ve read this year so far is “Ellen Price talks to the moon.” The connections between these images: “cum”, “hard lakes”, “fox fur” fills me with a sense of wild abandon. I feel like if this is possible in poetry then goddamn it, anything is. I think it’s akin to what Marquez felt when he first read Kafka. Not that I’m placing us in their shoes, but, you know – why not! I’m curious about a few things in connection to this piece. About the way you connect images, and why, how. About your subject matter here – where that inspiration came from, and if you regularly write from an “outside” historical perspective like this and then bring it “home”, and also about how you explore apparently “explicit” topics in your poetry. On that last point, I feel you have a unique flavor of expression in relation to sex. It’s refreshing but also entirely philosophical, and yet all at once tangible, raw. Please touch on any of the wandering wonderings I’ve brought forth here. 

Réka

I like to write poems about works of art. During the summer of 2022, I collaborated with my friend, the British poet, Alan Peat. We co-wrote a collection of 60 haibun each prompted by the work of a female surrealist artist.* I can only engage with art that affects me emotionally. Once the emotional connection materializes I start a journey of reinventing the world of that given piece of art. At the end of this process of imagining I need to have a poem that can stand on its own two feet. During this act of conjuring, I try to leap as far as possible from the starting point. So, “Ellen Price talks to the moon” is the outcome of such invoking and provoking. It is a very personal yet universal poem. It is about my unlived life (“no…cake”) and the grief I inherited from my mother and my mother’s mother whose lives were, in so many ways, unlived. It is about seeking refuge in illusions and imagined worlds (“I become a mermaid”). It is about wanting, yearning, craving: “My mouth wants what another mouth has to eat.” With this poem I allowed myself to be as bold and raw as possible. I wanted to assume all my fantasies and wants. I wanted it to be loudly, shockingly strange.

* ‘Barking at the Coming Rain’ Réka Nyitrai & Alan Peat (Alba Publishing, 2023)