Márton Koppány (b. 1953) lives in Budapest, Hungary. His latest book is Addenda (Otoliths, 2012). His latest e-book is Hungarian LangArt (Eratio, 2014). Recent shows: Text Festival, Manchester, 2011 and 2014; The Dark Would, Edinburgh, 2013. Recent readings: University of North Florida, Jacksonville; Green Lantern Gallery, Chicago; Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee; Birkbeck, X Marks The Bökship and Rich Mix, London.
1. So, you have Saroyan's poem on your light switch :)
Yes, indeed, Sreemanti. As my old friend, Peter O'Leary said in his essay written more than a decade ago (it is convenient to quote his words because I
could only re-tell a similar story in broken English):
"Saroyan's poem on the page is an illuminated zen koan of language; a wry, ironic, incisive demonstration of the powers of language, such that the
silently passedover 'gh' demands somehow to be mentioned, even in its unsounded silence. The reading eye sees and then hears it. On the level of this
readerly conundrum
Saroyan's poem has mainly lived, as a simultaneous moment of clarity and confusion. Márton's placement of this poem in his physical world, however, ritualizes the poem, transforming the expression of that extra 'gh' into physical presence. The sound of the silent 'gh' is commemorated whenever the lightswitch is flipped."
I can only add to it that many years ago we placed a big bookcase in front of that lightswitch therefore I can't use it anymore. Here I send you a relatively old visual poem, dedicated to Aram Saroyan’s “lighght”. It is titled: "Click Poem" /2006/.
2. You lend the other's words frequently...do you feel they express you more
eloquently, relevantly? Is this a linguistic insecurity or do you suffer from wordlessness...
Both. I started learning English over 30 (before that time French was my second language), and although I've read a lot, and I can enjoy more and more (kind of) poetries in English as well, my knowledge is still very limited (which is especially evident in live speech but also in writing). On the other hand, I've never been extremely talkative, therefore it was relatively painless to move (step by step, as I see in retrospect) toward visual poetry. I also felt to be forced to "get rid" of my mother tongue. It had to do with different circumstances, the cultural climate of an Eastern block country in the 70's and 80's included. I've talked about
those circumstances in a recent interview conducted by Tom Beckett, and elsewhere. Instead of trying to repeat myself, I'd like to add that quoting is a device for commenting, and I love commentary. Beyond (or before) unconscious appropriations, some of my visual poems are also comments on others’ works. I've commented on Gomringer's famous concrete poem, "Silencio" (written in 1954), several times. In "Csend (Silence) – for Geof Huth" /2005/, for instance, I play a bit with what silence “is” and what it is like in a constellation different from Gomringer’s. It was helpful that in Hungarian "star" and "asterisk" are the very same word.
3. The first thing that strikes me as I go through your work is that it is ‘stark’. I use ‘stark’ and not minimalist, because minimalism is a concious style, even a form, but what I find in you is a dialect within a visual language, that creates it’s own form. Like Whitman and Dylan Thomas, who could’ve moulded their style to the specific human condition at the specific time. Have you consciously stylised your work as a signature?
Yes, it is stark, or as a friend of mine stated in a text yet unpublished: “The surface qualities of Koppany’s work are digital, smooth, without bump or scratch. In a sense the surface qualities of Koppany’s visual work are negligible and non-existent.” (Surface qualities bring to my mind too that my late father Hungarized his family name just before I was born, and I could never identify with it – nor could he, I guess. It has remained strange to me and I always get surprised when I see it on its own on the page, without my first name, as something related to me.) I’ve never looked for a stark or bumpless style though, it is absolutely not conscious. In the more recent past I experimented with handwritten or hand-drawn elements as well, and it was helpful for a while, because it brought back that childlike curiosity and joy, which had been so liberating in the early 80’s, when I started writing minimalist sequences based on repetition and empty spaces, and one more time in 2004-2005, when I “discovered” digital collage. Anyway, I’ve always been more interested in what can’t be seen or shown than what is represented
on the page or on the screen. I consider my visual poems auxiliary lines.
4. I’ve enjoyed going through ‘Waves’. I myself am extremely fond of the particular allegory of oncoming and receeding waves and time Time itself. What piqued me particularly is how you’ve dealt with the subtleties of experience and the cyclical journey of thoughts and emotions. In fact, I think it is heavily oriental or as in classical music, where time seems to roll into itself, time and again.
I’m so happy that you liked that old sequence, Sreemanti. It is online here: http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/pdfs/Waves.pdf
and also here: http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/koppany/marton40.htm
(The techniques of the two presentations are not the same.)
One thing it tells me is that the three blank pages are not less (or more) different from each other than from any other page. They have a rhythm. It might be heavily – or at least lightly – oriental. (I’m aware of the issues about such categories as oriental.) Koan’s language was certainly an important source of inspiration in the 70’s and 80’s. (But it took me decades to get from D.T. Suzuki to Hee-Jin Kim, for instance.)
5. I’ve read reviews calling you ‘unconventional’. I increasingly find that less understood Art is marked by this particular term. I call this ‘the satisfaction of ignorance’. Have you ever felt out of place even within the accolades?
I’ve felt out of place frequently here in Hungary for many reasons, but never within the accolades. It is so fantastic that somebody is willing to concentrate on my work – even writes about it. And their point of view might be more interesting than mine.
6. I see Hungary recurring in your work. In some, as I sift through the apparent jaunty-ness of the composition, I decipher a subtle irony, even a maladuptive patriotism.
Yes, exactly! In patriotism Thomas Bernhard and Bela Tarr are my icons. As a reaction to the more and more absurd situation in Hungary I started writing “political” visual poetry in 2010. Now the situation is really bad (it is not easy to be the most nationalist and xenophobic country in today’s Europe but “we” did it), and I’m running out of my sense of humor.
7. I was intrigued by Endgame. Beyond being Beckettish, this series has a pungent hatred
towards formal language, philology and forms. At once apologetic and inventive, there is something insatiably challenging in each of the pieces. I have to mention the question Mark and Comma series.
Do you mean my first collection of digital visual poetry titled Endgames, published in 2008, which can also be found online here: https://sites.google.com/site/booksbymartonkoppany/home/endgames ? There are plenty of punctuation mark poems, still lives and landscapes in it. I started tinkering with punctuation marks in 2004. They are very convenient if you look for less than words. Letter-shapes are convenient too. But we will never bump into the smallest particles because meaning is complex and will remain so at every level of reduction, and degree of spontaneity.
8. Where do you see ‘visual poetry’ as a genre is heading? What should be in the mind of a
potential visual poet?
I have no idea where visual poetry and its different relatives under different new labels are heading. The next post on facebook by a poet whose name is new to me can change the whole scene.
Had I not been published first by poets and visual poets such as Simon Cutts, Bob Grumman and Jesse Glass, today I would easily call myself an (unknown) intermedia or text artist. (Except that I’m not completely senile yet and don’t call myself an artist or a poet in most situations.)
9. You have exquisitely fashioned a limitation (of language) into a tool for expression (visual poetry). What’s thrilling is the ‘beyondness’ in your work. What are your chief influences?
Thank you very much, Sreemanti! “Beyondness” begs for “limitations”, they belong together. Poetry is an open field, but each project is a playground with its own frames and limitations, which are not against us, because we created them. (Found or made: I don’t see any difference.) So by constructing a poem we are in the delightful situation of moving beyond our bad or depressing limitations by accepting new ones.
(“A hope replacing a destroyed hope.” And “A hope reminding of the irreplacable character of a destroyed hope.” /Those are two subsequent cards from a longer sequence written in the mid 80’s./)
In a recent interview conducted by Tom Beckett, I’ve already referred to the language of koans and Kafka’s oeuvre (especially The Trial) as basic experiences. I added George Brecht, Robert Lax and Bern Porter. Then the great Hungarian poet Dezso Tandori, one generation older than me, and Karl Kempton, Bob Grumman, Karl Young, K.S. Ernst and Roy Arenella from that generation of outstanding visual poets. The list could be longer in several dimensions. Shouldn’t I have started it with the novels of Jules Verne that I devoured at ten? (And with the gorgeous woodcuts in it?) Or with Eric Rohmer’s extremely moving “Le rayon vert”, adapted from the very same Verne, which I watched decades later?
To focus on visual poetry, over the last couple of years I’ve been in touch with more visual poets than before, thanks to the internet and also to events in the US and the UK I participated in. Their works are permanent source of inspiration. And it was especially entertaining and instructive to collaborate with some of them. "It is not fortunate to make lists, but I wouldn’t like to leave without mentioning how indebted I am, and will remain, beside the above mentioned poets of the older generation, to Geof Huth, Sheila Murphy, Stephen Nelson and Gary Barwin, for their work, company and support, which is true of my wonderful collaborators, Satu Kaikkonen, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Nico Vassilakis, Mike Cannell, Michele Marinelli, Andrew Topel, Jim Leftwich, Anatol Knotek, Tamarin Norwood and Peter O'Leary as well
10. What’s next?
The situation in Hungary is discouraging and I’ve had a few health issues lately. At 62 one of my next projects might be to leave poetry. (It is never too late.) But I hope it will be a relatively slow process, I’ll enjoy myself, and won’t be a bore for some of my potential readers at least.
Thank you for talking to The Odd Magazine. We wish you all success now and in the times to come.
List of Artworks
1. Click Poem /2006/
2. Csend (Silence) – for Geof Huth /2005/
3. Still Life – for Carmen Racovitza /2012/
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6. The Enemy of The People /2013/
7. Addendum /2012/
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9. ID /2015/
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Artworks used for homepage graphics include:
"It is My English Not Me" and "Where" by Marton Koppany
Oil Paintings by Bassam Al Hajali