POETRY BY STÉFAN NÉMETH

No Reply is proud to announce the debut poetry of Italo-Georgian poet Stéfan Németh.

Teeming with juxtapositions of contemporary life and the interplay between memory and time, Németh invites readers to contemplate the nature of late-modern existence and the persistence of humankind in a world moving beyond humanity itself.

Passages is unencumbered by the usual units of poetry – divisions into whole poems. As recounted in the publisher’s afterword, this work comes to readers by a crooked route. Whether it should be taken as a collection of poems, a single long poem, or fragments of a longer yet-unpublished poem, is a matter of debate. But it does not really matter: What is clear is that Németh’s verse is a stylistic achievement, wise and moving. It returns again and again to vast questions within personal disassociative moments. Intimate, opaque. In a word, a fugue. In the Press’ estimation, this is some of the finest new poetry around.

It would only be right to present Passages in poetry’s most intimate form – the chapbook. Taking inspiration from Aralia and Gruffyground Presses, with the flourish of hand-painted covers á la Hogarth Press, its form aims to be as striking yet understated as the poetry itself. The chapbook is printed in a tidy Weiss with brief ornamentation, heavily impressed on cotton paper, and wrapped each in an original painting evoking the work’s infatuation with time and water.

Multidisciplinary artist Stéfan Németh hails from Tbilisi, Georgia. Born in rural Sardinia, he enjoys cooking spaghetti alla carbonara, recycling, and playing board games with his wife and friends. He's one of those people who still believe a whole lot of reality amounts to goodness. His work includes prose and poetics in textual and audiovisual format.