What is language away from home? / by Helen Hajnoczky

Tomorrow I will be reading along with a group of other authors who write in multiple languages at the event “Polyglot: Multilingual Readings by Calgary Writers.” It’s at the downtown Calgary Public Library at 6:30. The event was organized by the CPL writer in residence Jaspreet Singh, which is especially cool for me as he was the writer in residence when I was a student at UofC, and I was quite in awe hearing him read from Seventeen Tomatoes.

After reading for a few minutes, we will each be speaking for a few minutes about writing in multiple languages I was thinking how this has changed for me since my dad passed, but it occurs to me that I wrote Magyarazni when I lived in Montreal, and not at a time when I was home in Calgary speaking Hungarian on a daily basis. I’m not really sure what significance there is to that, but I’m thinking about it… and might talk about it a bit tomorrow if I can pull out the interesting thread there.