On the Day of Hungarian Poetry, our international students have been joining the traditional poem recitations at the university since 2018. They recited the chosen poem of the year in Hungarian, translated it into their mother tongue, or accompanied it with music. We have already enjoyed listening to On My Birthday by Attila József recited in English, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Korean, Serbian, Albanian, Russian, Arabic, Swahili and French, and Endre Ady's poem On New Waters in Hungarian and in English with musical accompaniment in the inner courtyard of the main building in Gödöllő.
Adapted to the special circumstances, Poetry Day 2021 was organized as an online event by MATE International Relations Centre, and participants could join it with their own video recordings or with other posts or videos of poems that were somehow important to them.
The poem Spring by Lőrinc Szabó was recited in Hungarian by our Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship students studying Hungarian, and our students of the Preparatory course in Hungarian language performed the same poem by translating it into their mother tongues (Russian, Kazakh, Portuguese, Arabic, Lao).
Two of our students' videos were particularly heart-warming. Omar Alzain recited two stanzas from John the Valiant by Sándor Petőfi in Hungarian, and Jessica Dias recited the poem Soneto de Fidelidade by the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes in Portuguese.
Thank you all for your participation! We hope that the online event has encouraged more of our students and staff to participate next year when we will be able to celebrate the Day of Hungarian Poetry together in person on all our campuses.
Shared posts can still be viewed at the Facebook event Discussion:
https://www.facebook.com/events/3473517546088018/?active_tab=discussion
https://www.facebook.com/omar.alabdallah.39/videos/4090309137691753/
https://www.facebook.com/jessicaeldias/videos/139312178198526/