Júlia Kustos

- Hungary -

Júlia Kustos, born in 1996 in Szombathely, is a poet and writer who has lived in Budapest since 2014. She has published regularly in literary journals since 2013 (among others: Élet és Irodalom, Jelenkor, Alföld, Székelyföld, Hévíz, and a column for Helikon) and worked as a literary critic until 2021. Her poetry and prose have appeared in both Turkish and Slovenian. In 2018 she won the Zsigmond Móricz Literary Scholarship, and in 2022 she spent three months in Slovakia with the support of the V4 Literary Residency program. Her first volume, Hullámtörő (Breakwater), was published by Jelenkor in 2022 and received the Péter Horváth Literary Grant. She is currently working on her second poetry volume and her first novel.


Critical reception of Breakwater:

Júlia Kustos’ Breakwater is not only the most exciting debut volume of 2022, but also an outstanding poetic achievement of its generation. The subtle linguistic and typographical games, the gently assertive manner of speech, the mysterious world of poems making use of pre-modern structures, and the multi-layered exploration of the relationship between power and gender make Breakwater one of the standout volumes of the year. – Dániel Fenyő: 2022 magyar KULTverseskötetei (KULT poetry volumes)

Júlia Kustos’ first volume is an exceptionally well-constructed composition, at once sparingly modest and frighteningly rich. Kustos confidently controls the techniques of how the text operates; in reference to the story of Pygmalion, one of the important myths evoked in the volume, we can say that the author’s creations truly come to life. – Zoltán Csehy: Emlékhagyás, sztaffázs, uszonynosztalgia (Omission, Staffage, and Nostalgia)

Júlia Kustos is a good poet, and it is just such daring gestures and acknowledged blemishes, rarely seen in modern literature, that make Breakwater an outstanding volume. – Balázs Mohácsi: A nevelődés közelképei (A close-up on upbringing). Jelenkor, 2022 July-August

All this beauty is not in vain. The intensive dialogue with poetic tradition, the experimentation with register – these are not uninhibited play, not some vague first attempt at flight. Nor is it a parade of forms or some spectacular showdown with the poetry of the past. With a strong filter and ample reflection, Kustos works. European lyrical poetry, the poem as purification of an object, an artifact, is at work here, so that from all that is purified, from all that survives the breaking of the waves, she can form, create, and adapt her own voice, her own poetic world to the present, to the questions of the moment – knowing that the desire for knowledge and actual knowledge will perhaps never meet, and that finding the right words, the right poetic voice for the expression of all things, is the greatest challenge. – Beatrix Visy: „arany díszített szarvakkal” (With gold-plated horns). Élet és Irodalom, LXVI. volume, issue 31.