Collected Világos by Aaron Kent
Broken Sleep Books
Published 31st October 2025.
Aaron Kent began writing under the pseudonym U. G. Világos in 2015, during a period when he was attending group therapy, working two jobs, and struggling to overcome personal traumas that had brought him to the brink. He wanted to write about the traumatic experiences he endured during his time in the military and the horrific events he witnessed, but he didn't feel comfortable attaching his real name to those memories or identifying himself through them. To create distance and preserve a sense of anonymity, he adopted a pseudonym””one that not only concealed his identity but also paid tribute to his grandfather, Jenö Világos. Jenö, who was Aaron's closest companion during his childhood, introduced him to Laurel and Hardy and remained a cherished influence until his passing in 2021, while Aaron was still writing as Világos. The name 'Jenö' is the Hungarian equivalent of 'Eugene,' which inspired the initials U. G. Aaron Kent's Collected Világos is a sprawling, genre-resistant archive of poetic experimentation, written under the pseudonym U. G. Világos between 2015 and 2025. Framed through a sequence of fictionalised chronologies and stylistic constraints, the work spans typographic abstraction, confessional collapse, conceptual hoaxes, and lyric shards, building a cumulative portrait of trauma, memory, grief, and creative subterfuge. The texts fold into and refract one another, often obscuring authorship in favour of disorientation, catharsis, or concealment. What emerges is not a linear narrative but an extended act of self-elegy””at once literary performance, psychological exorcism, and post-traumatic artefact. I found, after 10 years of writing under a pseudonym, that I no longer had the ability to write as U. G., and I think the reasons for this are twofold. First being that my Grandfather had passed away, and when he died, and I wrote the eulogy for him (Collected Experimentalisms 2005-2008), U. G. died with him. The second reason being that I had been in therapy for a couple of years and had confronted the things that I had hidden beneath my writing, and had learnt to forgive myself. After ten years of writing under a pseudonym, Aaron Kent found himself unable to continue as U. G. Világos. He attributed this to two main reasons. The first was the death of his grandfather. When Jenö Világos passed away, and Aaron wrote his eulogy””Collected Experimentalisms 2005-2008””it felt as though U. G. passed with him. The second reason was the personal growth Aaron had undergone through years of therapy. During that time, he confronted the traumas he had previously buried in his writing and came to a place of self-forgiveness.
Aaron Kent began writing under the pseudonym U. G. Világos in 2015, during a period when he was attending group therapy, working two jobs, and struggling to overcome personal traumas that had brought him to the brink. He wanted to write about the traumatic experiences he endured during his time in the military and the horrific events he witnessed, but he didn't feel comfortable attaching his real name to those memories or identifying himself through them. To create distance and preserve a sense of anonymity, he adopted a pseudonym””one that not only concealed his identity but also paid tribute to his grandfather, Jenö Világos. Jenö, who was Aaron's closest companion during his childhood, introduced him to Laurel and Hardy and remained a cherished influence until his passing in 2021, while Aaron was still writing as Világos. The name 'Jenö' is the Hungarian equivalent of 'Eugene,' which inspired the initials U. G. Aaron Kent's Collected Világos is a sprawling, genre-resistant archive of poetic experimentation, written under the pseudonym U. G. Világos between 2015 and 2025. Framed through a sequence of fictionalised chronologies and stylistic constraints, the work spans typographic abstraction, confessional collapse, conceptual hoaxes, and lyric shards, building a cumulative portrait of trauma, memory, grief, and creative subterfuge. The texts fold into and refract one another, often obscuring authorship in favour of disorientation, catharsis, or concealment. What emerges is not a linear narrative but an extended act of self-elegy””at once literary performance, psychological exorcism, and post-traumatic artefact. I found, after 10 years of writing under a pseudonym, that I no longer had the ability to write as U. G., and I think the reasons for this are twofold. First being that my Grandfather had passed away, and when he died, and I wrote the eulogy for him (Collected Experimentalisms 2005-2008), U. G. died with him. The second reason being that I had been in therapy for a couple of years and had confronted the things that I had hidden beneath my writing, and had learnt to forgive myself. After ten years of writing under a pseudonym, Aaron Kent found himself unable to continue as U. G. Világos. He attributed this to two main reasons. The first was the death of his grandfather. When Jenö Világos passed away, and Aaron wrote his eulogy””Collected Experimentalisms 2005-2008””it felt as though U. G. passed with him. The second reason was the personal growth Aaron had undergone through years of therapy. During that time, he confronted the traumas he had previously buried in his writing and came to a place of self-forgiveness.
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