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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...

How imagination remembers is twofold, an enfolded act of greed and ingenuity I believe these impulses to be linked in a narrative sense Imagination is always greedy, never sated, or full, with the present Imagination informs the imagineer: I need more! Just as the belly of the compulsive eater must be filled, so imagination can never be stuffed Memory feeds famished imagination, but memory is a faulty mechanism: a selfish, subjective substance also requiring constant nourishment itself in order to function in any low state   Memory cannot be entrusted with conservation Conservation is a contrary motion moving backwards and forwards, pushing and pulling; forever the desire to move forwards, yet looking forever backwards to ensure it is going the right way, doing the right thing   What conservation requires is proof Conservation needs proof in order to be able to proceed with sureness   This proof is not easy to come by   Detailed systems of discovery and exposure need to be set in place in order to pinpoint such proof Proof is, of course, always contextual and may only be seen as certain if it may be compared with other, very similar things, or processes The definition of verisimilitude depends of course on what sort of proof is it you’re after   The proof of Palácio Pombal is evidenced in what is left behind I’m looking at the proof this was a palácio, not that it still is one I accept I’ve come here to experience closely, to try for clarity And what is called into question, rather what arises as a question from my observations is: How can I be sure?   I’ve carefully read the information I was sent about the Palácio I read it because I felt I should I’m trying to forget what I read I’m trying to forget history, in order to overwrite the fragmented, chronological proofs, kindly translated and supplied upon my request This request to Mariana emerged from my doubt rather than my curiosity We human creatures must find our match in scale   *** Naturally, Palácio Pombal

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

November 2014

Like Rabbits

Bethan Roberts

poetry

November 2014

When my husband unrolled the back door of the brewery’s lorry and hoisted first one cage, then another, onto...

Interview

November 2016

Interview with Dodie Bellamy

Lucy Ives

Interview

November 2016

The summer of 2016 was for me the Summer of Dodie Bellamy. I am a New York resident, but...

poetry

November 2016

Gentle

Harriet Moore

poetry

November 2016

Forgive me Sister for I have sinned it’s been seconds since my last confession. I sit in the dark...

 

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