Dancing Embers

Sá ndor Ká nyá di was born in 1929 in the small Transylvanian village of Galambfalva to a family of farmers. Since 1950 he lived in Kolozsvá r (Cluj-Napoca) Romania. A graduate in Hungarian philology from Bó lyai University, he served as editor on a number of Hungarian-language journals and magazines. Since his first book of poetry appeared in 1955 he published over a dozen volumes. His translation work included both Saxon folk poetry and Yiddish folk poetry from Transylvania - in bilingual volumes - as well as contemporary Romanian poets and the major German and French poets of the 19th and 20th centuries. His was the recipient of the Poetry Prize of the Romanian Writers' Union and the Kossuth Prize in Hungary, the preeminent literary awards of their respective countries, the Austrian Herder Prize, and the Central European Time Millennium Prize (2000). Ká nyá di passed in June 2018 - an obituary by translator Paul Sohar is here.