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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...

Taxi The taxi stopped and Henry climbed into the taxi The taxi driver went around the block three times before finally deciding to head to the train station Henry thought about complaining but the bag was bulky and cumbrous, his arms were arching, his hands were red, and so the three times around the block helped with restitutio in integrum Henry had been reading Latin They say it is language in a state of moribundity It is not yet dead and so the death scene can be compared to Othello’s Henry had also been reading Shakespeare, something at school he had omitted with the help of cigarettes and a coquettish thirteen year old that showed her underwear for the last two drags on the cigarette She always wore white cotton panties Now Henry dreamed of white cotton panties At the time he thought the girl and her white cotton panties a parasite, not worth the energy to expel the spit in his gob He always handed over the cigarette smeared with his spit The girl never seemed to mind She pulled on the cigarette as though it was very dangerous and she was behaving very naughty The morning sun made Henry feel uncomfortable He would have liked to change places with the bulky and cumbrous bag which was in the shade The taxi driver was no longer looking up the long road; his eyes had been diverted by a pair of long legs Henry and taxi driver eyed the woman about to cross the road She was wearing a fancy black dress and the pearls around her neck caught the sun The taxi driver slowed down the taxi Henry had to lean over and rest his elbows on the bulky and cumbrous bag The woman walked into the road and was hit by a van The van stopped The taxi had to stop Henry almost broke his neck The woman in the middle of the road was dead A pool of blood was slowly forming around her Henry thought of Desdemona A crowd gathered around her as flies around

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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April 2017

Symbols Made Me Hardcore

Joe Bucciero

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April 2017

‘A Sound System, like the property of any system, is the interaction of the sum of its parts.’ —...

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October 2014

For the Motherboard

Vanessa Hodgkinson

James Bridle

Art

October 2014

Please click on the links below to download, print and assemble (instructions in slideshow above) Vanessa Hodgkinson’s For the Motherboard:...

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March 2016

Seeing from behind: Park McArthur

Anna Gritz

Art

March 2016

In a public conversation between Park McArthur and Isla Leaver Yap that accompanied the former’s exhibition Poly at the...

 

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