Arts Desk
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
SZIRTES WINS T.S. ELIOT PRIZE
Hungarian-born poet and translator George Szirtes’s has won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize and L10,000 (about $19,000) for “Reel” (Bloodaxe Books), which was judged the best collection of new poetry published in the United Kingdom and Ireland in 2004.
Chair of the judges, Douglas Dunn, said: “The judges were impressed by the unusual degree of formal pressure exerted by Szirtes on his themes of memory and the impossibility of forgetting,” according to an article on the BBC’s Web site.
A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Mr. Szirtes lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch, and teaches at the Norwich School of Art and Design.
The prize is awarded by the Poetry Book Society, which Eliot helped to found in 1953. Previous winners of the prize include Ted Hughes, Don Paterson, and Alice Oswald.
