András Gerevich

András Gerevich (born 1976 in Budapest) poet, screenwriter and literary translator.

Life

Gerevich grew up in Budapest, Dublin and Vienna. He graduated with a major in English Language and Literature and a minor in Aesthetics at the Eotvos University of Budapest (ELTE). Later he was a Fulbright student at Dartmouth College in the United States, and received his third degree in screenwriting from the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in the UK. He now lives in Budapest, from 2006 to 2009 he was the president of József Attila Kör (JAK), the Hungarian Young Writers Association. He is also an editor of Kalligram, a monthly literary journal. He has published three books of poems in Hungarian, and a selection of his work has been translated into English by George Szirtes et al. His poems have been selected into several anthologies in a number of languages and published in journals and magazines. He is also the scriptwriter for short animation films. He has translated a number of English speaking poets and writers into Hungarian, including Seamus Heaney and the filmmaker David Lynch.

Poetry

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to write poems so clear, so pellucid, so free of metaphor and simile as to be almost pure speech. Everything depends on narrative shape and tone because there is little else. András Gerevich’s poems are like that. They are mostly about love, desire, and passion; a little like a diary, a little like a letter, a little like a confessional, the first person singular being at the centre of each. But there is nothing self-indulgent about them. In that respect they are reminiscent of Catullus on the one hand and Cavafy, in some moods, on the other. It is the range and precision of emotion that gives them their necessary independence: voice becomes free-standing sculpture, moving, elegant, beautiful. The poems enter English with a lightness, almost unannounced, as immediately recognisable feelings that make their own space and hold it as naturally as if they always belonged there.

— George Szirtes

Works

Bibliography

• Barátok, Kalligram Kiadó, Bratislava, 2009.
• Tiresias’s Confession (poems in English translations,) Corvina Publishing House, Budapest, 2008.
• Férfiak, Kalligram Kiadó, Bratislava, 2005.
• Átadom a pórázt, JAK-Balassi Kiadó, Budapest, 1997.

Filmography

• Loved (D: Yann Demange, NFTS Production, 2004)
• Heron People (D: Gemma Burditt, NFTS Production, 2004)
• A Different Dish (D: Shay Hamias, NFTS Production, 2005)
• Synchronoff (D: Catia Perez, NFTS Production, 2005)
• Immeasurable (D: Cziraki Gergely, NFTS Production, 2006)
• Forget Me Not (D: Kim Noce, Sherbet Films, 2006)

Plays

• Csillagfiú (Starchild). D: Tengely Gábor, Budapesti Bábszínház, premier: Feb. 2008