George Szirtes nominated for the Norwich City of Literature Award 2025
‘George Szirtes, acclaimed poet, translator and mentor, known for his lifelong contribution to East Anglian writing.’
Poet and translator George Szirtes has been nominated for the inaugural Norwich City of Literature Award, one of the East Anglian Book Awards 2025. He is one of five on the shortlist.
This new award honours individuals and organisations making an outstanding contribution to the region’s literary life through community engagement, publishing innovation or literary advocacy. It is supported by Norwich UNESCO City of Literature.
Peggy Hughes, CEO of the National Centre for Writing, commented on the East Anglian Book Awards 2025:
‘Big skies, bold stories — and, with the introduction of a new City of Literature Award and expanded eligibility criteria, an even broader celebration of East Anglian writers and publishers than ever before. We are proud and delighted to present this year’s shortlists, confident that the tapestry of words and ideas emerging from our region is richer than ever.’
The winner of the inaugural City of Literature Award will be decided by public vote, open to residents of Eastern England only. Vote closes at 10am on Friday 12 December 2025.
Voting information here, where there are also details of all the category shortlists in the East Anglian Book Awards 2025.
Category winners will be announced in January 2026. Both the overall Book of the Year and the City of Literature Awards will be presented at a special event at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich on Thursday 12 February 2026. Tickets are on sale now here.
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Poet, translator and memoirist George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England with his family as refugees 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 poets such as Ottó Orbán, Zsuzsa Rakovszky, Ágnes Nemes Nagy and Krisztina Tóth, and novelists including the 2025 Nobel Laureate László Krasznahorkai. His translation of Hungarian poet Krisztina Tóth's retrospective My Secret Life: Selected Poems, published in February 2025 by Bloodaxe Books, was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2025.
His own poetry has been published by Bloodaxe since 2000. He won the TS Eliot Prize for his 2004 collection Reel, now included in New & Collected Poems. This retrospective was followed by The Burning of the Books and other poems (2009), shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2009, Bad Machine (2013) a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2013, and Mapping the Delta (2016), which was the Poetry Book Society Choice for Winter 2016. A new collection, Fresh Out of the Sky, was published by Bloodaxe in October 2021.
Bloodaxe has also published his Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, Fortinbras at the Fishhouses: Responsibility, the Iron Curtain and the sense of history as knowledge (2010), and John Sears’ critical study, Reading George Szirtes (2008).
George Szirtes' memoir of his mother, The Photographer at Sixteen (MacLehose Press, 2019), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, and was adapted for Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4, narrated by George himself.
In December 2024 George Szirtes was named winner of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2024, which is awarded for excellence in poetry. He was presented with his award by King Charles III at Buckingham Palace on 26 November 2025.
'George Szirtes is a deserving recipient of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. For decades his crafted, observational poems have turned the spotlight on society and its values - how countries and regimes treat their people, how people operate under fluctuating political ideologies. His work and his perspectives are as relevant now as they were when he first put pen to paper, and possibly more so.' – The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, on behalf of The King's Gold Medal for Poetry Committee 2024
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GEORGE SZIRTES ON THE NOBEL LAUREATE IN LITERATURE 2025
The Times Literary Supplement, George Szirtes on László Krasznahorkai, Friday 17 October 2025
A full-page piece by poet George Szirtes on the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2025, László Krasznahorkai, ran in The Times Literary Supplement of 17 October 2025. George translated Krasznahrkai’s first three novels into English, including the most highly praised one, Satantango, his first book.
In print. Available online in full by subscription.
PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE SZIRTES
The Poems We Made Along the Way, Episode 31: George Szirtes, Monday 27 October 2025
An hour-long interview with poet, translator and memoirist George Szirtes features on Episode 31 of the podcast The Poems We Made Along the Way. He was in conver-sation with host Gregory Kearns about his work as both a poet and translator. He referred to sections from his most recent collection Fresh Out of the Sky.
‘On today’s episode of The Poems We Made Along the Way Gregory Kearns speaks to George Szirtes about form, translation, and the exact moment that he decided that he wanted to become a poet. George Szirtes is a poet, memoirist, editor and translator. He has published numerous collections of poetry including Reel (which won the TS Eliot Prize), Mapping the Delta and his most recent collection Fresh Out of the Sky published by Bloodaxe. He has translated numerous Hungarian writers into English including 2025’s Nobel Prize for Literature winner László Krasznahorkai.’
Listen to the podcast here.
GEORGE SZIRTES ONLINE INTERVIEW & FILM PORTRAIT
Hungarian Literature Online, interview with George Szirtes, full interview online 8 June 2025, film portrait on YouTube 22 June 2025
A major long-form interview with poet and translator George Szirtes went online in Hungarian Literature Online on 8 June 2025. Owen Good and Dóra Szekeres from HLO travelled to Norfolk with photographer Dániel Szandtner to conduct a life interview with George Szirtes over the course of three days. A substantial extract from the online interview was posted online in April 2025.
‘George Szirtes, T. S. Eliot Prize-winning poet and recipient of the King's Gold Medal for Poetry, is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary English literature and a committed translator of Hungarian poetry and fiction. We met him in England and Hungary and talked about his mixed identity, his Hungarian roots and the simultaneously impossible yet inevitable experience of becoming English – An interview by Owen Good and Dóra Szekeres.’
https://hlo.hu/interview/george-szirtes-i-saw-myself-as-a-budapest-tenement-block-in-an-english-suburb.html
Film portrait of George Szirtes, 22 June 2025
George Szirtes was filmed at home in Norfolk and on a visit to Budapest for a 25-minute film portrait by Hungarian Literature Online (Litera in Hungarian). During the course of the interview George read several extracts from his long poem 'The Photographer in Winter (i.m. M.S. 1924-1975)', first published in 1986 in his collection of that name, and now included in his 2008 retrospective New & Collected Poems. His most recent collection is Fresh Out of the Sky (2021). The interview is in English, with Hungarian subtitles.
'Filmed across England and Hungary, this documentary centres on a man at an angle to two languages and two homelands—offering his quiet reflection on identity, belonging, and the literary path he has traced between two worlds.'
https://hlo.hu/portrait/literature-comes-home-a-film-on-george-szirtes.html
POEM OF THE WEEK IN THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian, Poem of the Week, online 8 April 2024
Carol Rumens discussed George Szirtes's poem 'Diesel or steam' from his 2021 collection Fresh Out of the Sky as her Poem of the Week in The Guardian on 8 April 2024. The title-sequence of the collection 'examines childhood from a suddenly dislocated perspective after his family’s flight from Hungary in 1956'.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/08/poem-of-the-week-diesel-or-steam-by-george-szirtes
POEM OF THE WEEK FEATURE IN THE TLS
Times Literary Supplement, Poem of the Week, Friday 5 April 2024
George Szirtes’ poem ‘Meetings’ was featured as Poem of the Week in the TLS of 5 April 2024 introduced by Andrew McCullogh. ‘Meetings’ was first published in the TLS in 1984 and then in the collection The Photographer in Winter (1986). It is now included in George Szirtes’ 2008 Bloodaxe retrospective New & Collected Poems.
‘The poet and translator George Szirtes was born in Hungary in 1948 and moved to England with his parents – both survivors of concentration and labour camps – in 1956, after the Hungarian Revolution. He trained as an artist in London and Leeds and this, together with his bilingual background, helped develop an attention to shape and sound that accounts, perhaps, for his easy mastery of formal verse’ – Andrew McCullogh, The Times Literary Supplement (Poem of the Week)
The full commentary and poem can be seen online without subscription.
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/meetings-george-szirtes-poem-of-the-week-andrew-mcculloch
ONLINE INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE SZIRTES
Asymptote, online 20 January 2022
An in-depth interview with George Szirtes features on Asymptote, the internatioal site for world literature in translation. His latest collection Fresh Out of the Sky was discussed, as was his work as both poet and translator.
‘His newest collection of poems, Fresh Out of the Sky, was published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2021. It is a six-part meditation on country, identity, Judaism, belonging and political upheaval. In a world that seems to be growing ever more divided by borders–both physical and ideological—Szirtes brings beauty and humanity to the experience of migration. He reminds us why translation and art are essential in understanding one another and imagining worlds beyond our own.’ – Rose Bialer, Asymptote
Read in full here.
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
A wonderful in-depth review of George Szirtes’ Fresh Out of the Sky featured in the March 2022 issue of the online journal Dublin Review of Books. Read in full here.
‘Without question, George Szirtes is the most distinguished poet now living in England. Hungary’s loss was England’s gain in 1956 and those elements of Budapest Jewish life that Szirtes has reclaimed imaginatively only serve to enrich and expand England’s poetic consciousness.... Dealing with the most dreadful, dark materials, painfully honest about exile and isolation, Fresh Out of the Skies is, unexpectedly, a joyous and life-affirming work.’ – Thomas McCarthy, Dublin Review of Books
An excellent review of Fresh Out of the Sky features on London Grip of 1 January 2022. Read in full here.
'His latest volume of poems is a tour de force of what he has termed ‘the music of what happens’, a supremely well-modulated examination of both his own life and the world at large as seen through the eyes of someone, in Bob Dylan’s words, ‘always on the outside of whatever side there was’.' – Nick Cooke, London Grip, on Fresh Out of the Sky
An in-depth and thoughtful review of Fresh Out of the Sky was featured on the online poetry magazine Ink, Sweat & Tears on 27 January 2022. Read in full here.
‘With each collection, the past is redrawn through a mastery of form that we come to expect from this poet, (Szirtes is surely our contemporary master of both the terza-rima and sonnet crown).’ – Andrew McDonnell, Ink, Sweat & Tears
GEORGE SZIRTES ON BBC RADIO 3's PRIVATE PASSIONS
Private Passions: George Szirtes, BBC Radio 3, Sunday 9 May 2021, 12pm, repeated Sunday 30 January 2022, 12pm
George Szirtes was Michael Berkeley’s guest on Private Passions on 9 May 2021 (repeated 30 January 2022). He talked about his life and work as well as his musical choices. His poetry for adults is published by Bloodaxe. His new collection Fresh Out of the Sky, published by Bloodaxe in October 2021, remembers his arrival in England as a child in 1956, following his dramatic escape from Hungary. Michael Berkeley referred to the title poem from George’s debut collection The Slant Door, which is now included in New & Collected Poems. This retrospective also includes George Szirtes’ TS Eliot Prize-winning collection Reel.
‘George Szirtes arrived in Britain at the age of eight, wearing only one shoe. It was 1956, and as the Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest, George and his family fled on foot across the border to Austria, eventually ending up (with many others) as refugees in London. It was such a hasty journey that one of his shoes got lost on the way. From a very early age, he wanted to be a poet – and he has certainly fulfilled that ambition over the last forty years, publishing close to 20 books of prize-winning poetry, and as many translations from Hungarian literature. His moving memoir, The Photographer at 16, won the James Tait Black Prize and was recently broadcast on Radio 4.’
Listen here (this podcast edition has shorter musical clips).
[24 October 2025]
