Renáta Berkyová | trans. Meghan Forbes

Look into the lake,

braid algae with your mouth and down below

I fetch you

***

Renáta Berkyová received her Master’s and Bachelor’s in Romani Studies at the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague. She works primarily in the not-for-profit sector, and has for a long time collaborated, for example, with the organization ROMEA, dedicated to media representation of the Romani people. Since she was awarded the Milena Hübschmannová Prize for poetry in 2006, her work as a poet began to receive increased attention.

Meghan Forbes is the founder and a co-editor of harlequin creature.

The English translations of these poems first appeared in molossus, a blog published by phoneme media. Kolach and The Bus have previously appeared in Slovak and Romani on romea.cz in 2012. The Bus and Summer also appeared in Slovak on iTvar in 2013.

Image: Toyen (Marie Čermínová). Fishes. 1921. Reproduced in Toyen. Paris: Éditions Sokolova, 1953.