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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...

4    It’s New Year’s Eve, I’m standing newly divorced on a roof in a town, we toast the rockets wobble on their way what a party what an opportunity, almost an imperative to think something and do something about what you’ve thought   I think   I’m here now   I think   What do I need   Consumption inspires strength of mind even though it’s mindless but that’s a bad sentence to start a new year with, even though it’s true   I need: new beginnings, new maxims, new year’s resolutions   Of others I know only that it sucks the life out of a human being never to say thank you and to thank too much you have to do your own thing, put yourself first   or precisely don’t think so much don’t follow your desires, but pursue them and hope you don’t turn into some kind of monster on the way a monster that pulls things off the shelves with a dead automation and is itself anderswo engagiert and moreover has been so for a long time a monster that rattles around with its shopping trolley   A new year’s resolution: Don’t listen to too much twaddle that separates you from yourself but that’s difficult to live up to that’s why you need a resolution   A new year’s resolution: Listen to much and many because you can’t know beforehand what you’re missing what you’ll miss due to prejudice and stupidity so let it be a new year’s resolution to be less prejudiced and lazy and stupid but that’s difficult to live up to   I’m here now in the midst of life   Life which like time shifts restlessly in the sofa but never goes away life which is the opposite of death and death which is a euphemism for somethingorother orgasm, happiness, peace at long last, some peace and quiet imagine! to be able to just lounge  in the big, silent house where only tiredness moves   A new year’s resolution: Try not to read everything as if it were entrails or coffee grounds try not to long for everything too much try not to apologise for everything the apology is like the thank you a stupid place to be conscripted fanaticism is so unbecoming   I speak to myself in the imperative: Remember! that everyone knows a handful of psychopaths who live their lives as though they were the only person in it these people aren’t capable of much apart from working and partying and

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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poetry

January 2016

Sex-Desert

Galina Rymbu

TR. Joan Brooks

poetry

January 2016

I’m screaming lying alone in this settlement     everything empty only emptiness sex – is a desert  ...

Interview

Issue No. 2

Interview with Richard Wentworth

Ben Eastham

Interview

Issue No. 2

Richard Wentworth is among the most influential artists alive in Britain. He emerged in the 1970s as part of...

fiction

June 2015

Gandalf Goes West

Chris Power

fiction

June 2015

Hal stands in front of the screen. On the screen the words GANDALF GOES EAST.   GO EAST, types...

 

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