Poetry Expo 26
/ 1 February 2026
‘I am truth’ – a poem exploring the paradoxical nature of truth
Poetry Expo 2026
I’ve always been fascinated by the fragility and paradoxical nature of truth. Every argument about politics and virtually anything boils down to people trying to convince one another of their perceived truths. However, all of us experience life through our own senses, blind spots and perspectives. Objective truth cannot be experienced as it is distorted by our own subjectivity. The main message of this poem is therefore the following: the only objective truth is that there is no objective truth. This thought is paradoxical and contradictory and that’s what I attempted to express poetically.
The project is part of the subtheme Disrupted Realities – Poetry and the Politics of Truth.
Author
Barnabás Mármaros-Tóth
Barnabás Mármaros-Tóth is an 18-year-old Hungarian university student. He’s been writing poems for 7-8 years, but only as a hobby, he’s never received formal training. Although he mainly writes in Hungarian, he took on the challenge of writing in English for this expo. He mostly writes about his feelings as he believes that his deepest poems are born from unsaid words and unexpressed feelings, but he frequently takes a philosophical approach as well, that is more focused on the outside world.
He’s very passionate about poetry and he’s been recently submitting his poems for competitions to get unbiased feedback on the quality of their content. While he views poetry as self-expression, his ultimate goal is to have an impact on the reader.
