Helen Hajnoczky’s first book, Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising, was nominated for Expozine’s Best English Book of the Year. Her chapbook Bloom and Martyr was the winner of Kalamalka Press’s 2015 John Lent Poetry Prose Award. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Why Poetry Sucks and Ground Rules 2003-2013. She has also published work in magazines such as filling Station, Lemon Hound, Matrix, POETRY, Poetry is Dead and Rampike, as well as a variety of chapbooks.

Magyarázni

The word “magyarázni” (pronounced MUG-yar-az-knee) means “to explain” in Hungarian, but translates literally as “make it Hungarian.” This faux-Hungarian language primer, written in direct address, invites readers to experience what it is like to be “made Hungarian” by growing up with a parent who immigrated to North America as a refugee. In forty-five folk-art visual poems each paired with a written poem, Hajnoczky reveals the beauty and tension of first-generation cultural identity.