This week I’m writing a review of Kati Havran’s poetry collection Millióéves krátereket simogatsz (You Caress Million-Year-Old Craters) for Irodalmi Szemle (Literary Review). Starting next year, the journal will feature a joint review column by my father, Zoltán Csehy, and me, in which we will publish our reviews alternately.
Kati Havran’s debut collection immediately captivated me. I have long been particularly interested in biopoetics, and I feel especially close to the perspective in which nature appears not merely as a backdrop or setting, but as an all-pervading, almost transcendent force capable of absorbing the different layers of human existence into itself. I’m glad that, thanks to the review column, I’ll have the opportunity to become acquainted with even more works of contemporary literature.
At the same time, I’m continuing to take care of university-related matters. Beginning in September, I’ll start an English-language degree program at Masaryk University in Brno, so I currently have a long list of administrative tasks ahead of me: managing the IS system, applying for accommodation, arranging my public transport pass, and many other formalities.
Among this week’s logistical challenges is also organizing my upcoming trip to Cyprus. It’s surprisingly time-consuming to decide which books and which clothes deserve priority in my suitcase. :)
I’ve also enrolled in an intensive English course for the summer to keep my language skills sharp.
If everything goes according to plan, I’d also like to devote some time to my novel. Over the past months, I’ve accumulated countless outlines, notes, and ideas for it, and I feel that the time has finally come to turn them into a coherent manuscript. Whether I’ll ever finish it, I honestly don’t know, but it has occupied my thoughts for far too long for me to keep postponing it.