Márton Koppány (b. 1953) lives in Budapest, Hungary. His books include: Immortality and Freedom, Coracle Press, 1991; The Other Side, Kalligram 1999; To Be Or To Be, Runaway Spoon Press,1996; Investigations and Other Sequences, Ahadada Books, 2003; Endgames, Modulations, Addenda, all by Otoliths, 2008, 2010, 2012; this is visual poetry, 2010; Fall Leaves, Woodland Pattern Book Center, 2011; The Reader, Runaway Spoon Press, 2012. E-books include:
Waves,
HungarianLangArt,
TheAhaMoment , all by Eratio, 2008, 2014, 2016.
Collaborative books include : From The Annual Records of The Cloud Appreciation Society, with Nico Vassilakis, Otoliths, 2008; Short Movies, with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, cPress, 2008; Book of Numbers, with Jim Leftwich, Luna Bisonte Prods, 2011. An ongoing collaborative project with Anatol Knotek is online at
Márton and Anatol.
In anthologies: Anthology Spidertangle, The Last Vispo, A Global Visuage, The Dark Would and The New Concrete. First exhibitions: Barbican Library, 1989, Woodland Pattern, 1991. Recent shows: Text Festival, Manchester, 2011 and 2014; The Dark Would, Edinburgh, 2013. Recent readings (2011-2013): The Green Lantern, Chicago; Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee; UNF, Jacksonville; Birkbeck, Rich Mix and X Marks the Bökship, London.
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A Little Anthology of Ellipses
Lately I've been playing with putting together pieces from distant periods. Some recurring topics are: question marks, clouds, ellipses. They overlap, but ellipses outnumber everything else. Any triad of objects can be considered an ellipsis, and occasionally different (or seemingly different) numbers like 1, 2 and 4 serve the same "idea" even better, because they are elliptical only elliptically.
"Austro-Hungarian Ellipsis – for Anatol Knotek": In Hungarian and in German (also in Turkish) there is a vowel similar to o, but with two dots on it.
"Butterfly – for Gertrude" is dedicated to my late dog-friend, Gertrude, and was written on the day she died. A butterfly flew to the kitchen: it had never happened before.
Some of the pieces are more directly political than others. "Elliptical Idyl" originally had a subtitle referring to Hungary. Then I changed my mind because the situation in other countries had changed to the worse as well. I might change my mind again – I hope/I’m afraid.
Also: exile is a home, and emigration is when you should have left.
"PerMu 1-2 – for Dan Waber": mu is for negation or rather for dynamicity.
All poems were written between 2005 and 2017. The presentation doesn’t keep a chronological order. Some of the pieces included were previously published by Otoliths and Eratio.
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| Ancient Ellipsis (Fragment) |
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| Ellipsis No. 10 |
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| Bonsai – for a very long winter |
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| Ellipsis No. 5 |
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| Ellipsis No. 8 |
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the |
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Study |
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Elliptical Idyl |
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| Hungarian Passport (From Exile To Emmigration) |
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ID |
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| Austro-Hungarian Ellipsis – for Anatol Knotek |
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ing |
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| Ellipsis No. 16 |
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Question |
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still |
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almost a question |
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| Butterfly – for Gertrude |
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| PerMu 1 |
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PerMu 2 |
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| sleep disorder |
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| The Seer |