‘Passio’ launch, Tuesday 6 December

Poet and translator George Gömöri. Photo: Ben Gömöri.

Tuesday 6 December will see the launch in the the Library of Passio, a new collection of fourteen poems by János Pilinszky, translated from the Hungarian by George Gömöri and Clive Wilmer and published by the Worple Press. The event will take place in the Library’s Morison Room, starting at 5.00 p.m. and with readings from 5.30. The readings from the poems will be complemented by a display of items from the University Library’s collections relating to the translation of modern Hungarian poetry. Admission is free.

Clive Wilmer. Photo: Worple Press.

János Pilinszky (1921–1981), winner of the Baumgarten, József Attila and Kossuth prizes, was one of the most influential poets of twentieth-century Hungary.  George Gömöri was born in Budapest in 1934. After his involvement in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution he had to leave, finishing his studies in Oxford. He is a retired Lecturer from the University of Cambridge, having taught there for thirty-two years, and is Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College. A poet and translator, he has published twelve books of poetry in Hungarian and two in English. Clive Wilmer (b. 1945) has had many volumes of verse published by Carcanet. He is a fellow of Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, a Bye-Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, and an Honorary Fellow of Anglia Ruskin University. He was awarded the Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal for translation by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture in 2005. Passio is the sixth collaboration between Gömöri and Wilmer.