How did you first come to poetry? What is it about the form that resonates?
I started writing poems when I was 12 or 13 years old. During boring school classes. I wasn’t writing about love, like so many other young people! I wrote grotesque, morbid epitaphs, and songs for the gallows, although I didn't know the works of Christian Morgenstern at that time. I rejected 'official' poetry. I often got kicked out of literature class for laughing out loud at the poems in the textbook. Even today, I still consider art to be a total opposition to the expectations of the structures of a given society. So, I was an anarchist outsider from the beginning. (But creating is still better than throwing bombs and ranting out in the streets... Right?)
How does a poem begin?
It's a mystery... Maybe that's why I've always been so interested in the occult. It's as if some unknown force moves into me at such times, to say something through me... (William Blake also had his great poems dictated by "angels".) For simplicity's sake, let's call the moment when the work is conceived the state of inspiration.
Do you see your writing as a single, extended project, or a series of threads that occasionally weave together to form something else?
Variations of junctions, intersections, caves, and labyrinths. Obviously, sometimes they intertwine, and then I realize I've been here before, but then they branch off again in a hundred directions. It doesn't matter which way they go, for each path leads to the Unknown.
How do you see your text and visual works in conversion, if at all?
The Essence is often lost when we try to capture it in words. It's hidden behind linguistic structures. Visual poetry, on the other hand, opens the door to new, previously unknown possibilities of communication. I try to make them one and the same for me. I note that in today’s Hungary the experimental and the avant-garde have been completely deprived of their right to exist by the Power that has expropriated culture. Our approach to literature is stuck in the 19th century... Because all tyrannies have such shallow tastes…
Have you a daily schedule by which you work, or are you working to fit this in between other activities?
I'm obsessive and fanatical, so it's no small effort not to completely break away from "consumer society". It's necessary to make a living. But we must never let our money-making activities interfere with our creative work. So, I remained a poor man. But proud and free!
What are your favorite print or online literary journals?
All those which are spiritually related to me.
Who are some of the writers you are reading lately that most excite you?
My favorites are Baudelaire, Jarry, Lautréamont, Poe, Nietzsche,
H. P. Lovecraft, Céline, Aleister Crowley, C. G. Jung, Ezra Pound, the
"Beat Generation", and from Hungary (but obviously these names are
less known elsewhere) Jenő Komjáthy, Ady, Kassák... And from our time Kinga
Fabó, Ákos Fodor, Gábor Gyukics, Katalin Ladik, Károly Pető Tóth (So they are
not the minions of the mainstream...) The Hungarian language is an island in
Europe. If we cannot break out of it, if we do not cross our own borders - we
will be lost...
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Laszlo Aranyi (Frater Azmon) poet, anarchist, occultist from Hungary. Earlier books: (szellem)válaszok, A Nap és Holderők egyensúlya . New: Kiterített rókabőr. English poems published: Quail Bell Magazine, Lumin Journal, Moonchild Magazine, Scum Gentry Magazine, Pussy Magic, The Zen Space, Crêpe & Penn, Briars Lit, Acclamation Point, Truly U, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Lots of Light Literary Foundation, Honey Mag, Theta Wave, Re-side, Cape Magazine, Neuro Logical, The Daily Drunk Mag, Unpublishable Zine, Melbourne Culture Corner, Beir Bua Journal, Crown & Pen, Dead Fern Press, Coven Poetry Journal, Journal of Erato, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillover Magazine, Punk Noir, Nymphs Literary Journal, Synchronized Chaos, Impspired Magazine, Fugitives & Futurists, The Dope Fiend Daily, Mausoleum Press, Nine Magazines, Thanks Hun, Downtown Archive, Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal, Our Poetry Archive (OPA), Juniper Literary Magazine, Feral Dove Magazine, Alternate Route, CENTRE FOR EXPERIMENTAL ONTOLOGY, Bullshit Lit Magazine, Misery tourism, Terror House Press, Journal of Expressive Writing, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, WordCity Literary Journal, Wilder Literature Magazine, Roadside Raven Review, Death'sDormantDaughter, Rasputin, Amphora Magazine, Dope Fiend Daily, THIN SLICE ANXIETY, Dark Entries, FLEAS ON THE DOG, Dumpster Fire Press, DON’T SUBMIT!, Horror Sleaze Trash Magazine, Outcast Press, DOGZPLOT Magazine, BLACK STONE / WHITE STONE, Impractical Things Magazine, Medusa's Kitchen, Beatnik Cowboy, LET’S STAB CAESAR!, THE PEACH Magazine, Setu, Dire Need, All Ears (India), Rhodora Magazine, Arc Magazine, ShabdAaweg Review (India), Utsanga (Italy), Postscript Magazine (United Arab Emirates), The International Zine Project (France), Swala Tribe Magazine (Rwanda), The QuillS Journal (Nigeria). Known spiritualist mediums, art and explores the relationship between magic.