ROBERT ZEND (Budapest, 1929 - Toronto, 1985)
by Natalie Zend, Winter 2025, published in Oāb
Robert Zend was a Hungarian-Canadian poet, writer, radio documentary producer, and multi-media artist. Born in Budapest, he spent the early part of his professional life in Hungary editing films, designing movie posters and writing film reviews for the Hungarian National Filmmaking Company. He received a Bachelor of Arts in languages and literature from the Péter Pázmány University in Budapest in 1953. That same year, however, he was blacklisted by the Communist administration for a satirical critique he had written about the food at a political event. From then on, he was forced to patch together a meager livelihood as a freelance journalist, editor, translator (from German, Italian, and Russian), and popular children’s columnist. In 1956, his first book of 100 lyrical poems was about to be published in Budapest, when the Hungarian Revolution broke out but was brutally quashed by the Soviet Union. Fearing severe punishment for having produced and distributed leaflets inciting Hungarians to join the uprising, he seized an opportunity to flee to Canada with his wife, Ibi, and their infant daughter, Aniko.
He arrived in Toronto speaking not a word of English, but soon found work at Chatwynd Studios editing films and doing odd jobs. In 1958, he secured a position as a shipping clerk with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and rose through the ranks as a film librarian (1958) and film editor (1966), eventually becoming a producer for CBC Radio’s Ideas in 1969. There, he researched, wrote, directed and produced over one hundred one-hour radio programs featuring such notables as science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, poet Jorge Luis Borges, the 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, literary critic Northrop Frye, pianist Glenn Gould, writer Robert Graves, painter A.Y. Jackson, mime Marcel Marceau, animator and filmmaker Norman McLaren, and media studies pioneer Marshall McLuhan. In 1969 he earned a Master of Arts in Italian and Comparative Literature from the University of Toronto.
In his first years in Canada he was not yet able to write poetry or fiction in English. Being considered an enemy of the Communist regime, he was also unable to publish in Hungary. For about a year in 1961 he resolved this catch-22 by publishing the first Toronto Hungarian literary monthly, Torontói Tükör (Toronto Mirror). His work ultimately appeared in several other Hungarian-language publications over the course of his lifetime, such as Magyar Élet (Hungarian Life), Mirror, Hungarian Panorama, Menóra, Literary Gazette (Paris) and Hungarian Poets Abroad:
An Anthology.
However, it wasn’t until 1973—seventeen years after he was forced to abandon his publication-ready manuscript—that he was at last able to publish his first book of poetry, this time in English. From Zero to One (Sono Nis Press) was the fruit of his collaboration with a co-translator, the prolific poet and anthologist John Robert Colombo. That same year, he suffered the first of several heart attacks and strokes. He had completed coursework for a PhD in Italian literature at the University of Toronto, but decided not to continue with his dissertation. He also took early retirement from CBC but continued to work with Ideas as an independent producer until 1977.
From 1978 until his untimely death in 1985, he devoted himself fully to his writing and art. This was an intense period of creativity and collaboration. He published in numerous English-language journals, including Canadian Literature, Canadian Fiction Magazine, Exile Quarterly, The Malahat Review, and Rampike Magazine. His work featured in many English-language anthologies. He gave poetry readings at various venues and events in Toronto and in several cities across Canada. He was resident poet at the 6th and 7th Great Canadian Poetry Festival in Collingwood in 1981 and 1982, and writer-in-residence at Trent University in 1983.
During this period and throughout his life, his creative output did not just include verse, stories, concrete poems and typewriter art. His visual art also encompassed collage, doodles and visual word puns, flip books such as Linelife (1983, published on robertzend.ca), and art/poetry on found objects such as automotive gaskets and toilet paper rolls. Photography was a lifelong passion, winning him a prize in the 1968 Budapest Photo Contest. He wrote and produced several short films (unreleased), even receiving a grant from the Canadian Film Development Corporation. He was an early Rubik’s Cube enthusiast and co-authored “Key to the Cube” (unpublished) with his friend Frank Juranka. His unpublished translations include the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh and the classic Hungarian play by Imre Madách, The Tragedy of Man. Though he never learned to read music, he was a gifted pianist who improvised, composed and could play anything by ear.
The years from 1981 to 1985 were especially fruitful, yielding several collaborative and solo publications. The first was My Friend, Jerónimo: Space Goes Through (Omnibooks, 1981), a signed limited edition of three poems by Zend and four silk screens by Spanish-Canadian artist, poet and academic Jerónimo González-Martín. Beyond Labels, a second volume of poems translated with John Robert Colombo, appeared the following year (Hounslow Press, 1982). That same year, Zend published Arbormundi (blewointmentpress, 1982), a portfolio of concrete poems he created with a manual typewriter in a process he described in “Type Scapes: A Mystery Story” (Exile: A Literary Quarterly, 1978). He joined Canadian poet Robert Priest and American-Canadian poet and novelist Robert Sward to form a group they called The Three Roberts. A series of thematic chapbooks resulted from their poetry readings at various Toronto venues: Premiere Performance (HMS Press, 1984), On Love (Dreadnought, 1984), and On Childhood (Moonstone Press,1985). Finally, in 1983 and 1985, the first and second volumes of what Zend considered to be his magnum opus, Oāb, were published by Exile Editions.
Robert Zend did not live to see the publication of Oāb 2, which was launched just two weeks after he died of a heart attack on June 27, 1985. To paraphrase his poem, entitled “When,” a period was placed in the middle of the sentence of his life. He left behind a houseful of mostly unpublished creative work. His widow, Janine, whom he had met in 1965 and married in 1970, spent the following eight years sorting through his creative artifacts. Her labours resulted in fifteen shelf metres at the University of Toronto Media Commons Archives and five posthumous books, two in English and three in Hungarian.
Daymares: Selected Fictions on Dreams and Time (Ronsdale Press, 1991) is a collection mostly of short stories, but also poems and concrete poems. Nicolette: a novel novel (Ronsdale Press, 1991) is an avant-garde love story that Zend wrote in Hungarian and translated into English himself. The first Hungarian book to appear was Versek, Képversek (Magyar Műhely, 1988), a collection of concrete poetry mostly in Hungarian. Hazám Törve Kettővel (Omnibooks, 1991) is a selection of poetic and prose writings on the theme of the émigré’s divided loyalties. Fábol Vaskarikatúrák (Magyar Világ Kiadó, 1993) comprises parodies of everything from folk stories, Hungarian literature, Hungarian-Canadian and world literature, to visual art and music.
Two decades went by. Many of Zend’s writings were only scantily available, some even out of print, when American-Canadian poet and collage artist Camille Martin published a series of sixteen blog posts on his life and work entitled “Robert Zend: Poet without Borders” (rogueembryo.com, 2013-2014). Soon after, Robert and Janine’s daughter, Natalie, published The Robert Zend Website (robertzend.ca) to make his already published and some unpublished work more easily available to a global audience. These developments helped to renew interest in Zend.
In 2014, his typescapes were included in Typewriter Art: A Modern Anthology (Laurence King Publishing, ed. Barrie Tullett). In 2016, a laneway in Toronto was named in his honour. That same year, Hungarian literary quarterly Tempevölgy featured Zend’s writings along with memorial writings on Zend by poets bill bissett, Robert Priest and Robert Sward, among others. In 2017, his most comprehensive collection of poetry in any language, Bibliai Időkben Éltűnk, was selected and published in Hungary by Seleris Project Bt. This led to his inclusion in two anthologies of Hungarian-Canadian writing, Határtalanul Magyar (2019) and Magyarnak Maradni (2020). He was even translated into Esperanto by Ralph Dumain and featured in Beletra Almanako in 2017 and 2018. In 2025, Oāb, the work Zend considered to be his masterpiece, was republished in the US by Delete Press as the single volume he always intended it to be.