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George Szirtes
George Szirtes's many books of poetry have won various prizes including the T. S. Eliot Prize (2004), for which he is again shortlisted for Bad Machine (2013). His translation of László Krasznahorkai's Satantango (2013) was awarded the Best Translated Book Award in the US. The act of translation is, he thinks, bound to involve fidelity, ambiguity, confusion and betrayal.

Articles Available Online


Foreword: A Pound of Flesh

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Issue No. 12

George Szirtes

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Issue No. 12

1.   ANALOGIES FOR TRANSLATION ARE MANY, most of them assuming a definable something on one side of the equation – a fixed original...

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January 2014

Afterword: The Death of the Translator

George Szirtes

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January 2014

1. The translator meets himself emerging from his lover’s bedroom. So much for fidelity, he thinks. 2. Je est...

Do You Want To Dip The Rat   Do you want to dip the rat Completely in oil   Do you want to dip the rat Before we eat it eat it   Do you want to dip the rat Completely in oil   Before we eat it   Tender tender meat Like pork shoulder   A hundred traps set Eighty hanging in a row to be broiled   With you I’d take it raw   Tiny pink feet Glistening with oil   Legs and feet Glistening with oil   Matted fur and face Weighted down with oil   Everything in oil But the teeth are shiny clean   No what I really want to know Before you open that mouth again   Should we completely dip the rat in oil Before we eat it eat it   Should we completely Dip the rat in oil   Before we eat it       The Nurse Said   The nurse said To swallow The brown pills first     Then the blue Then she said to take the blue And throw them on the floor     And stamp stamp Stamp hard She said     Outside the thunder is very rough What is the sun if not an ending You and the other people     When you split from the man in the poem Baby Nothing sadder than that     Nothing sadder than that Had ever happened to me I cried and cried     But it was silent Like spring tears Like some sort of spring green     Civil law Is tender It’s tender like the skin     Like the skin Come too soon Like the pink skin with blood     But my blood grew But my blood Grew in you     You were so green Now you are so blue The nurse said     Eat the yellow ones I eat the sun And my face is not afraid     Do you hear me I am not afraid I’ve fought this long     You will not Break Me     You sweet, sweet one Sweet and tender Like pork shoulder     Sweet Sweet and gone Lips pursed in a ribbon  

Contributor

August 2014

George Szirtes

Contributor

August 2014

George Szirtes’s many books of poetry have won various prizes including the T. S. Eliot Prize (2004), for which...

Shine On You Crazy Diamond

poetry

November 2013

George Szirtes

poetry

November 2013

And so they shone, every one of them, each crazy, everyone a diamond shining the way things shine, each becoming a gleam in his...
Rescue Me

poetry

November 2013

George Szirtes

poetry

November 2013

Pain comes like this: packaged in a moment of hubris with a backing band too big for its own good. It isn’t the same...

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Prize Entry

April 2017

/gosha rubchinskiy/

Christopher Burkham

Prize Entry

April 2017

1. APARTMENT INTERIOR/MORNING/BELYAYEVO, MOCKBA, ROSSIJSKAJA FEDERACIJA…   There is a T-shirt on the desk in front of him.  ...

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August 2013

The Ghosts of Place

Dylan Trigg

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August 2013

 ‘So I turned around for an instant to look at what my field of vision onto the sea had...

Art

June 2013

Ghosts and Relics: The Haunting Avant-Garde

John Douglas Millar

Art

June 2013

‘The avant-garde can’t be ignored, so to ignore it – as most humanist British novelists do – is the...

 

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