Sándor Kányádi

Sándor Kányádi
Sándor Kányádi
Born	May 10, 1929(1929-05-10) Porumbenii Mari (Nagygalambfalva)
Occupation	poet
Notable award(s)	Kossuth Prize Herder Prize

Sándor Kányádi (born 1929) is an ethnic Hungarian poet and translator from the geographical region Transylvania, Romania. He is one of the most famous contemporary Hungarian-language poets.

Biography

Born in Porumbenii Mari, a small village in the region Transylvania, to a family of Hungarian farmers, he moved to Cluj-Napoca in 1950. Nowadays, he spends his time in both Budapest and his cottage in the Transylvanian countryside.

Kányádi graduated from Bolyai University with a degree in philosophy and became a teacher of Hungarian language and literature. He published his first volume of poetry in 1955 while an assistant editor and frequent contributor for several literary magazines, including poems to children's magazines that are still very popular today. His translations are also very popular and include Saxon and Yiddish folk poetry, contemporary Romanian poetry, and major German and French poets. He also gave several literary talks abroad during the 1960s and 1970s to Hungarian communities in Western Europe, Scandinavia, North America, and South America.

He has been active in political issues throughout the years, as shown in his numerous works relating to the oppression of the Transylvanian Hungarian minority throughout the years. In 1987 the Romanian Communist government refused him a passport to visit an international poets' conference in Rotterdam, which resulted in his resignation from the Romanian Writers' Union out of protest.

Awards

Sándor Kányádi's autograph

Among others honours, he is the recipient of the

• Kossuth Prize,
• Poetry Prize of the Romanian Writers' Union
• Herder Prize in Vienna in 1995,
• Central European Time Millennium Prize

External links

• Another biographical site, with more information on works
• Travis Jeppesen on Kanyadi's Dancing Embers