Dates

• Existence: 1948-

Biography

The poet and translator George [Gyorgy] Gabor Nicholas Szirtes was born in Budapest on 29 November 1948 and came to England after the revolution of 1956. Between 1960 and 1973 he was educated at Kingsbury County Grammar School, the Harrow School of Art, Leeds College of Art, and Goldsmiths' College, London. He worked as a schoolteacher, and from 1975 to 1987 was Head of Art first at Hitchin Girls School and then at St Christopher School, Letchworth. From 1987 he worked as a freelance writer and translator, and among other posts held lecturing positions at Norwich School of Art and Design and the University of East Anglia. A selection of Szirtes's work appeared in Poetry Introduction 4 (Faber and Faber, 1978), and he has published numerous volumes of poetry, principally with Secker and Warburg, Oxford University Press, and Bloodaxe Books. Szirtes made a first return to Hungary in 1984 and has revisited the country many times subsequently; he has published numerous translations into English of Hungarian verse and prose. George Szirtes and the artist Clarissa Upchurch were married in 1970. Upchurch was born in China and in childhood moved between England and Malaysia. She was trained as an artist at Sheffield, Harrow and Norwich Schools of Art. Szirtes and Upchurch founded the Starwheel Press, for the production of portfolios of poems and etchings, in 1976.

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