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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...

We’re in Try Thai, a two-storey cocktail-pink restaurant I discovered a few years ago when visiting my sister who was studying in Manchester Following our respective readings at Manchester Literature Festival, I convince Terrance Hayes, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Kayo Chingonyi and Sarah Perry to follow Google Maps from Central Library through a few dark alleyways to Chinatown in search of ‘this great Thai place I know’   Have you ever confidently remembered the food somewhere being great but suddenly − in certain company − you worry the whole walk there they’ll be like ‘great food?’ and forever you will be known as the one who makes bad dinner suggestions…?   Terrance Hayes: I refuse to answer any serious questions   Rachel Long: I’ll have to make all this up then   TH: Yeah, make it up I’d be more interested in reading a made-up interview than a real one   RL: OK Why do you wear two watches?   TH: I’m a timelord Umm, my daughter got me this one [left wrist] when she was seven, and then when the iWatch was invented they all got together and got me this [right wrist] So two watches   Victoria Adukwei Bulley: Whereabouts do you live in New York?   TH: In the village Pretty much NYU, but a little further out – in faculty housing   RL: So, you’re like roomies with Sharon Olds?   TH: Yeah, we’re in the same building I was in the elevator the other day and I felt this… like I felt rather than saw her Sharon Olds is a Scorpio too, so I could just feel this energy, this ball of pink and white Her white hair Yeah, she’s in the building Last time I saw her she was talking about cats, and spiders I can tell you a story like that about Zadie [Smith] too… It was my first time meeting her in person I knew who she was, of course, but as soon as I met her I was like… she’s a Scorpio   RL: Is this the wine list? Who’s for wine? [Deciding chatter We decide on white A Gavi] You’re sure no wine?   TH: Only tequila Expensive so no risk of hangover tequila

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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fiction

July 2012

Whatever Happened To Harold Absalon?

Simon Okotie

fiction

July 2012

1. The hotel lobby was both cleansed and fragrant, as was the receptionist speaking softly on the phone behind...

fiction

January 2014

Son of Man

Yi Mun-yol

TR. Brother Anthony of Taizé

fiction

January 2014

Rain falling onto thick layers of accumulated dust had left the windows of the criminal investigations office so mottled...

Interview

January 2017

Interview with Barbara T. Smith

Ciara Moloney

Interview

January 2017

Californian artist Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931) is something of a performance art legend. It was in the 1960s...

 

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