George Szirtes, poet, translator, editor, critic, artist

George Szirtes

details

biography	publications	what the press says
awards & residencies	editorial work	teaching
work in other media	website links	sample of work

Faber Memorial Prize, 1980 - for The Slant Door

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, 1982

Arts Council Travelling Scholarship, 1984

Cholmondeley Prize, 1986

Dery Prize for Translation, 1990 - for The Tragedy of Man

Gold Star of the Hungarian Republic, 1991

Short listed for Whitbread Poetry Prize, 1992 - for Bridge Passages

European Poetry Translation Prize, 1995 - for New Life

Shortlisted for Aristeion Translation Prize 1996 - for New Life

Sony Bronze Award, 1999 - for contribution to BBC Radio Three, Danube programmes (5 x 20 minutes)

Shortlisted for Weidenfeld Prize, 1999 - for The Adventures of Sindbad

Shortlisted for Forward Prize 1999 - Single Poem, "Backwaters: Norfolk Fields"

George Cushing Prize, 2001 - Anglo-Hungarian relations

Travelling Scholarship from The Society of Authors, 2002
He will spend this partly on a US tour, but chiefly on a visit to China

Seven books Poetry Book Society Choices or Recommendations: Short Wave, The Photographer in Winter, Metro, Bridge Passages, The Colonnade of Teeth, Portrait of my Father in an English Landscape, The Budapest File, An English Apocalypse

Seven books named books of the year in various national newspapers: The Photographer in Winter, Metro, Anna Édes, New Life, Selected Poems, Portrait of my Father in an English Landscape, The Budapest File

PBS 'Choice' and Shortlisted for TS Eliot Prize 2004 - for REEL.

International Writer Fellow, Trinity College, Dublin 2000

British Council Scholar in Hungary 1985, 87, and 89

Appearances at many festivals and conferences in Europe, USA and UK

To be resident writer at BCLT Conference, Cambridge, July 2002

To be resident writer at Tonbridge School, October 2002

RADIO / TELEVISION

Very many works for radio, the most recent being "Transylvana", "Portrait of My Father in an English Landscape", "The Lullaby of Broadway" and "The Old Scouts", all broadcast on BBC Radio 3 or 4.

Beside poetry he has often appeared as a critic on various book programmes and as a cultural journalist.

For television, most recently: sonnet for National Poetry Day 2000.

OPERA / THEATRE / MUSIC

Author of some sixteen plays, musicals, opera libretti and oratorios, most recently Air Kissing with the composer Jane Wells, to be premiered at the Chard Festival in 2003.

VISUAL ART

For several years operated and contributed (as an artist) to The Starwheel Press.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/speech/workinp/szirtes.shtml

BBC Radio 3: "Hungarian poet, George Szirtes, describes the creative - and often frustrating - process of writing his first novel, set in the murky world of wrestling."

http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/personpage.asp?author=George%2Bszirtes

Bloodaxe Books - Author Page

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/poetry/story/0,6000,581382,00.html

Wrestling with Englishness Hungarian émigré George Szirtes tells James Hopkin about his dual tongues (Saturday October 27, 2001).

http://www.lidiavianu.go.ro/

"Desperado Literature" site - Lidia Vianu interviews George Szirtes

Early Music

The little one was a slow speaker. Not until
The toy violin fell on his head did he mutter
The word 'violin' like a minor miracle.

Language opened its doors to him. He would utter
Prophecies and curses in the vocabulary of music.
Music ran through his fingers like melted butter.

Music would be the saving of him, music or magic.
Life would exercise him no more than those quaint
Ornaments he mastered, the beginner's trick

Of sounding like genius. Women would faint
To hear him, he was so beautiful to see,
And practised night and day without complaint.

Romantic reveries nurtured the folly
Of his parents. Monstrous hopes sat on the stairs
Frowning darkly at the happy family,

(Who were they to give themselves such airs?)
But music was aspiration, they could not breathe without it.
It was the flowering of their sad affairs.

The dead, undoubtedly, were firmly behind it,
Their bloodied faces and emaciated bodies
Resounding through the child, endlessly implicit,

In scales, arpeggios and those awkward studies.

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