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Born in Budapest in 1948, George Szirtes came
to England as a refugee, following the Hungarian Uprising in
1956.
His family settled in London and he trained
as a painter in Leeds and London.
His return visits to Hungary from 1984
onwards have resulted in a stream of translations into
English.
He is married to the artist Clarissa Upchurch
(see link) with whom he lives in Norfolk, where he is Co-ordinator of
Creative Writing at the Norwich School of Art and Design. Their two grown
up children live and work in London.
His work is included in many national and
international anthologies and in anthologies for children. His poetry has
been translated into most European languages.
Poetry
The Slant Door (Secker & Warburg,
1979)
November and May (Secker & Warburg,
1981)
Short Wave (Secker & Warburg,
1984)
The Photographer in Winter (Secker & Warburg,
1986)
Metro (OUP, 1988)
Bridge Passages
(OUP, 1991)
Blind Field (OUP, 1994)
Selected
Poems (OUP, 1996)
The Red All Over Riddle Book
(Faber, for children, 1997)
Portrait of my Father in an English
Landscape (OUP, 1998)
The Budapest File
(Bloodaxe, 2000)
Bloodaxe: the Poetry
Quartets. Cassette, reading with Anne Stevenson, Michael
Donaghy and Moniza Alvi (Bloodaxe / British Council, 2000)
An
English Apocalypse (Bloodaxe 2001)
REEL
(Bloodaxe, November 2004)
Art
Exercise of Power: The art of Ana Maria
Pacheco (Ashgate / Lund Humphries, 2001)
Translation
Imre Madách:
The Tragedy of Man, verse play (Corvina / Puski
1989)
Sándor Csoóri: Barbarian Prayer. Selected
Poems. (part translator, Corvina 1989)
István Vas: Through the
Smoke. Selected Poems. (editor and part translator,
Corvina, 1989)
Dezsõ Kosztolányi: Anna Édes. Novel.
(Quartet, 1991)
Ottó Orbán: The Blood of the Walsungs.
Selected Poems. (editor and majority translator, Bloodaxe,
1993)
Zsuzsa Rakovszky: New Life. Selected Poems. (editor
and translator, OUP March, 1994)
The Colonnade of Teeth:
Twentieth Century Hungarian Poetry (anthology, co-editor and
translator, Bloodaxe 1996)
The Lost Rider: Hungarian Poetry
16-20th Century, an anthology, editor and chief translator
(Corvina, 1998)
Gyula Krúdy: The Adventures of Sindbad
short stories (CEUP, 1999)
Lászlo Krasznahorkai: The Melancholy
of Resistance Novel, (Quartet, 1999; New Directions, 2000)
The Night of
Akhenaton: Selected Poems of Ágnes Names Nagy (translator, Bloodaxe,
November 2003)
An anthology of
contemporary Hungarian fiction and poetry for Harvill, to coincide with
the Hungarian Year of Culture in the UK from Nov 2003 - Nov 2004.
"George Szirtes has made a unique
contribution to the debate about the insularity of contemporary English
poetry. He has taken England into Europe... his triumph is in his ability
to wring lyrical language from grim subjects without averting his
eyes." Peter Porter, The Observer
"The calm clarity of his poetry is classical
in the only worthwhile sense: that it gives lasting utterance to
experiences which poetry must engage with if it is to speak in dead
earnest to the betrayed world." John Lucas, The New
Statesman
"Serious as Brodsky, culturally wide-ranging
as Peter Porter (both acknowledged mentors) Szirtes is one of the best
poets we have." William Scammell, Independent on
Sunday
"...combining a dizzyingly metamorphic
imagination with formal strictness ... a genuine strangeness his second
language can count itself lucky to accommodate." Sean O'Brien,
The Sunday Times
"There is steel in Szirtes's poetry, even at
its lightest... These selected poems are a must for those who do not know
Szirtes's poetry and a joy for those who do." Helen Dunmore, The
Observer
"...a major contribution to post-war
literature... Using a painter-like collage of images to retrieve lost
times, lives, cities and betrayed hopes, Szirtes weaves his personal and
historical themes into this work of profound psychological complexity...by
the time Szirtes was writing 'The Swimmers' and 'The Buttonmaker's Tale'
he was a master." Anne Stevenson, Poetry Review
"His great achievement, especially in the
magnificent long poems, has been to develop a formal technique able to
meet the demands of speaking out clearly and giving witness to the very
worst this century has heaped on us." Michael Murphy, Poetry
Wales
"... Szirtes gives not only the historical
perspective but also the wonders of our own language...[He] is one of the
few poets writing in English capable of such a synthesis..." Judith
Kitchen, Georgia Review (US)
"... Happy is the man who can draw out from
his work a single thread of such brilliance and plenitude. It would be
surprising if even a poet of comparable range such as Derek Mahon could
distil such a body of work about his troubled homeland..." Poetry
Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2000
"...an object lesson in how to ground
discourse in tangible, identifiable experience..." Ra Page, Literary
Review
For recent overviews of his work & career
see features in The Times (19.7.2000), The Guardian (27.10.2001), The
Irish Times (25.11.2000).
The Collected Poems of Freda Downie
(Bloodaxe 1995)
New Writing 10, Anthology of new
writing co-edited with Penelope Lively (Picador 2001)
See also The Colonnade of Teeth and
others translations listed in publications above
George Szirtes wrote the undergraduate course
in creative writing and is now coordinator of Creative Writing at Norwich
School of Art and Design
Too many short courses to list, including
WICE in Paris...
Regular tutoring for the Arvon
Foundation
Many schools visits
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