George Szirtes came to England as an eight-year-old refugee after the Hungarian uprising. His two Bloodaxe selections The Budapest File and An English Apocalypse bring together his poems on Hungarian and English themes. In his new collection, Reel, the exile's obsessive quest for the nature of humane truth is the focus of poems of visionary sweep which pan out across a life. Memory is film in Reel: a film-crew shoot Budapest for Berlin; faces float like light on the sea; names appear and disappear on a search engine. George Szirtes reconstructs childhood from a confusion of memories, photographs and stories in which men and women change places and fathers multiply. There are sequences on love, desire and illusion, poems about political loyalties, and poems that form ghost texts shadowing other writers. 'A major contribution to post-war literature...Using a painter-like collage of images to retrieve lost times, lives, cities and betrayed hopes, Szirtes weaves his personal and historical themes into work of profound psychological complexity' - anne stevenson, Poetry Review 'Szirtes is increasingly revealed as a major English poet - one of those in whom insight and technique combine to focus more and more productively as the years go by' - hugh macpherson, Poetry Review 'The calm clarity of his poetry is classical in the only worthwhile sense: that it gives lasting utterance to experiences which poetry must engage with if it is to speak in dead earnest to the betrayed world' - john lucas, New Statesman
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...deals with the complexity of experience as it plays on individual characters, as seen from the perspective of an outsider-observer. -- Eastern Daily Press, January 19, 2005
He frequently finds himself questioning the nature of human existence...rarely has it found such profound and direct expression. -- Scottish Sunday Herald, January 30, 2005
Szirtes is increasingly revealed as a major English poet. -- Hugh Macpherson, Poetry Review
a brilliantly virtuosic collection of deeply felt poems concerned with the personal impact of the dislocations. -- BBC, 18 January 2005
his poetry gives lasting utterance to experiences which poetry must engage with -- John Lucas, New Statesman
‘A major contribution to post-war literature… -- Anne Stevenson, Poetry Review
He frequently finds himself questioning the nature of human existence...rarely has it found such profound and direct expression. -- Scottish Sunday Herald, January 30, 2005
Szirtes is increasingly revealed as a major English poet. -- Hugh Macpherson, Poetry Review
a brilliantly virtuosic collection of deeply felt poems concerned with the personal impact of the dislocations. -- BBC, 18 January 2005
his poetry gives lasting utterance to experiences which poetry must engage with -- John Lucas, New Statesman
‘A major contribution to post-war literature… -- Anne Stevenson, Poetry Review
About the Author
george szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He was educated in England, training as a painter, and has always written in English. In recent years he has worked as a translator of Hungarian literature, producing editions of such writers as Otto Orban and Zsuzsa Rakovszky, the latest being The Night of Akhenaton by Agnes Nemes Nagy from Bloodaxe in 2004. He also co-edited Bloodaxe's Hungarian anthology The Colonnade of Teeth. After four collections with Secker and five with OUP, he moved to Bloodaxe, publishing his Hungarian retrospective The Budapest File in 2000 and An English Apocalypse in 2001. He lives in Norfolk and teaches at Norwich School of Art and Design and the University of East Anglia.
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