George Szirtes

Poet and translator

Hungarian-born British Poet and translator. Collections include The Slant Door and Reel, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

As if the past could swallow everything
and leave the world in darkness, blundering
about the courtyards! ...

Public transport has been stitching together
The unfinished business of old Europe.

From ‘Ghost Train’ in Selected Poems 1976-1996 (Oxford: OUP, 1996) 

George Szirtes
by Jemimah Kuhfeld
C-type colour print, June 2008
NPG x133080
© Jemimah Kuhfeld