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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...

  Autoclonography   for performance   In 1998, scientists in South Korea claimed to have successfully cloned a human embryo, but said the experiment was interrupted very early when the clone was just a group of four cells In 2002, Clonaid, part of a religious group that believes humans were created by extra- terrestrials, held a news conference to announce the birth of what it claimed to be the first cloned human, a girl named Eve However, de- spite repeated requests by the research community and the news media, Clonaid never provided any evidence to confirm the existence of this clone or the other twelve human clones it purportedly created —National Human Genome Research Institute, “Cloning Fact Sheet”   1 the sonographic fetus is a cyborg—clonograph—dear future clones you are multiple—to use the letter s to make more of someone—to use the letter s to make a very small silent black river—into which many babies have been borne away—and into the river under the river—the black ocean under the blue ocean—catacombs of bones of those delivered unto the shore beneath the shore—as men of God from Spain and the Spain beneath Spain—arrived with their ships of death beneath death—the world under this world that outnumbers this world   2 dear future clones I love you more—than I love myself because there are more of you—than there are of me although I am your mother—and your sister and your ancestor—and look in the mirror at your young face—and look behind you at my olding face—and you can do something only prophets can do—which is to see into the future—Τειρεσίας / Tiresias killed two snakes with a stick—Hera punished him and changed his sex—he was turned into a woman—he served Hera as a priestess, he got married to a man and had children—when he came upon two snakes again he decided to leave them alone—it broke the curse—he was turned back into a man   3 to love the word offspring—to spring from a trap to spring from jail—sperkhesthai “to hurry” hurry spring come rain-shine—always spring in the wombs deployed

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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Interview

March 2017

Interview with Ondjaki

Stephen Henighan

Interview

March 2017

Ondjaki is the most prominent African writer of Portuguese from the generations born after Portugal’s five former colonies on...

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Issue No. 17

Editorial

The Editors

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Issue No. 17

An Englishman, a Frenchman and an Irishman set up a magazine in London in 2010. This sounds like the...

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Issue No. 9

The White Review No. 9 Editorial

The Editors

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Issue No. 9

This ninth print issue of The White Review is characterised by little more than the continuation of the principles...

 

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