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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...

I disowned my real pain & engaged with its subordinates:   despicable neediness, heroic guilt and undeterrable envy Each day I woke trussed up with this hernia of failure, bleat bleat There was inevitable blood; I slept on a pyre of bottles Stalked by motherhood, unable to summon my latent powers Leaves blew into the hallway and did their ageing there, the eager wind fussed with them like the beaded fringe of a shawl at war with itself Powerful identification with the leaves In the garden, splendour made its entrance while I wasn’t looking I was quaking all this time, my whole body a throat stoppered by tears I tried to will dreams of romantic redemption, but my brain swatted them away, like flies gunning for something you really want to eat     No one should be frightened of pleats (Coco Chanel)   My life has been merely a prolonged childhood Bored, with a squalid boredness that idleness and riches bring about (I would make a very bad dead person) Money is not attractive, it’s convenient The only thing I really like spending is my strength Every time I’ve done something reasonable, it’s brought me bad luck: that sweet smile of gratitude, tinged with a longing to kill me I am ready to start all over again The first people to whom I opened my heart were the dead I hate people touching me, rather as cats do I merely observe that I have grown up, lived, and am growing old alone I loathe people putting order into my disorder Let them skip the pages Sometimes I lose myself in the maze of my legendary fame What an abomination, a ghastly disease! That handsome parasite that is the imagination, lapped up in secret, in the so-called attic I imposed black; it’s still going strong today I don’t have to explain my creations; they have explained themselves I knew how to express my times I used to tolerate colour Changing one’s mind appalls me Do you see what a foul temper I have? I cannot take orders from anyone, except in love, madly, with a man who loathes me Everything is lovely and empty I only care for trivial things, else nothing at all If I built aeroplanes, I would begin by making one that was

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

May 2015

Europe

Kirill Medvedev

TR. Keith Gessen

poetry

May 2015

I’m riding the bus with a group of athletes from some provincial town they’re going to a competition in...

poetry

November 2015

Two Poems

Ko Un

TR. Brother Anthony of Taizé

TR. Lee Sang-Wha

poetry

November 2015

Kim Geung-Ryeol   During the Japanese colonial period he attended Japan’s Military Academy, became squadron leader in the Japanese...

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September 2013

Outside the Uniform

Kaya Genç

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September 2013

I.   The first time I had to wear a uniform I looked like a madman struggling against a...

 

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