Silence and Other Poems
Release date: September 1st, 2026
 
 
Silence and Other Poems is a bilingual collection by the celebrated Hungarian-Romani poet and painter Károly Bari. Translated by accomplished poet and translator gábor g. gyukics, this volume collects twenty-four poems spanning the poet’s career of over half a century. A former political prisoner in his home nation of Hungary, Bari’s surrealist verses examine the beauty of nature and explore the struggles of the Roma. Fourteen paintings from Bari’s collections of Romani folklore are included to enhance the cultural richness of the work and to help bring the poems to life. This collection is an essential, passionate masterpiece for anyone with an interest in nature writing, Christian mysticism and Romani cultural heritage.
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“I deeply appreciate this work translated into English by gábor g. gyukics, preserving the force and passionate work of historic Romani poet Károly Bari. It is time for all of us to hear the stories of humanist and artistic struggle in the crises and world upheaval of our times. We are all entangled in the story of oppression and liberation and the great poetry and imagination that helps the world reckon with and recognize itself.”
—Anne Waldman, author of Mesopotopia (Penguin)
 
 
Károly Bari, a Hungarian poet, essayist, folklorist, graphic artist and translator of several Romani languages, was born in 1952 in Bükkaranyos, a small Hungarian mountain village, in a Romani family as the fifth of seven children. After primary school, he attended grammar school in Miskolc, and after graduating, he studied at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest and at the Faculty of Arts of the Lajos Kossuth University in Debrecen. He was still a high school student when his first poetry book garnered wide acclaim in his homeland and was published in two successive editions. He has published several volumes since then. In the mid-1970s he was imprisoned in one of the most notorious prisons in Hungary for his political poems. After his release, he was pushed to the periphery of society for several years. He wrote and edited twenty-six books of poetry, tales, folklore and prose. He published eighteen CDs of Romani folklore and created a Romani dictionary. His work has been critically acclaimed by many reviewers, literary and academic scholars. He received the Kossuth Prize, Hungary’s highest official state award, and was elected to the Digital Literary Academy of Hungary.