George Szirtes was my mentor during my Visible Communities Translator Residency in January 2025.

We worked on a sample translation by Géza Bereményi and looked at two of my poems at his home, after a lunch cooked by his wife, Clarissa, who has incredible Hungarian culinary skills. She admitted she’d picked them up from George’s mother, and we still had the taste of Hungarian paprika, smoked bacon, and sweet meringue lingering on our tongues when we turned our attention to the work in front of us.

George’s generosity never ceases to amaze me, and I felt reassured—in my poetry—that I am walking the right path. While working on the translation of the prologue to one of Bereményi’s short story collections, we laughed a lot, discovering layers in the original, ‘reading between lines’. Understanding subtext is a vital part of translation, and I felt that we were wallowing in it together—enjoying the nuances of a language we both know intimately. His linguistic versatility in English opened my eyes to a freer approach and a much deeper understanding of the techniques required to deliver a good translation.

George had received the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, an annual award given to a poet from the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth realm for excellence in poetry. King George V established the award in 1933, and it has been awarded since 1934, traditionally announced on William Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23rd. In recent years, recipients have included Imtiaz Dharker, Paul Muldoon, Liz Lochhead, the late Michael Longley, and Mimi Khalvati, to name a few. I interviewed George on this occasion for Irish PEN, where I am a member. We had previously been invited to read at the Human Rights Festival in Dublin a couple of years ago and they intended to include the interview in their newsletter for the members.

So, on another, breezy January afternoon at Dragon Hall, we sat down in the Butterfly Café to chat.

CT: Congratulation on your Award, the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry. How do you feel and how does this relate to your status as a member of PEN as well as being an immigrant to the UK?

GS: I have been a member of English PEN since its beginning for 45 years, but also the Royal Society of Literature for 33 years and just now last week, we were talking about the future of the organisation, but because I live so far away from London, I rarely can go to meetings these days. I remember great PEN parties in London in the 1980s, though.

CT: There was a Hungarian PEN for some time, wasn’t there….

GS: I was not involved with Hungarian organisations. I went there as a translator and an English writer and I was of interest for them for a while. That is how I met Agnes Nemes Nagy and we became friends. I have been translating since 1984, and then I translated The Tragedy of Man by Madach.

CT: That was far before the change of the government and the new republic.

GS: Yes, and I went back every year with the support of the Arts Council and then the British Council and then it was extended for nine months in 1989.

CT: Those were interesting times.

GS: Yes, in 1989 I spent nine months, the longest time in Hungary. I say Hungary, but I mean Budapest. I travelled a bit, but I do not have much understanding of life in the provincial towns or villages outside Budapest.

CT: How do you feel about this award? What does it mean to you?

GS: It is a different form of honour than other literary prizes. It has not come with money. The list of those poets who had won it is marvellous and being part of that list is probably the best thing about it. I think it was given from 1933, so it’s an honour and any honour is nice. I wonder if it meant something slightly different in my case because all except one of the previous winners were born in Britain or the Commonwealth.

CT: Who was the one?

GS: Mimi Khalvati – she is Iranian. She was the one before me. Before it was Imtiaz Darker, who I know very well. She was born in Pakistan.

CT: So, they are opening to diversity as well.

GS: Yes, they are. I think, but this is mere speculation that it implies that one way I am regarded as British. Sometimes people let me know in the nicest way possible that I am not English.

CT: You are an immigrant.

GS: Yesterday, I was talking to an organiser of a poetry festival in Swindon and he remarked on my Hungarian accent.

CT: (laughs)

GS: How long have I been living here? 67 years?

CT: I have not noticed your Hungarian accent but maybe somebody with a good ear can.

GS: I have been asked a lot: do you think you are a Hungarian living in Britain or are you British with a Hungarian background? I’m British with a Hungarian background, so that’s the thing. I am an immigrant but it was a really lucky time for us. I was welcomed.

CT: Yes, you were regarded as heroes in 1956.

GS: We were supported. My father had some English and he acted as an interpreter for refugees and we were helped with our mortgage to buy our first house.

CT: So, the government chipped in. GS: And other organisations. My father never hid the fact that he was Jewish. My mother did. She always denied it. So, there were Jewish charities as well. I don’t think I can remember any serious occasions when people treated me differently because I was a migrant or a Jew. There were tiny things, but they were not important. So, I always described myself as a guest in the country who is now permanently living in the house, so to speak.

CT: What is the exact wording of the award? Is it for your life’s work or a particular collection?

GS: It is for poetry, but that means a lot of books. I was rung up in the middle of October by Simon Armitage the Poet Laureate and he did not make it very clear, but he said that it was for translations and other literary work I have done. It was general. If there is one book it was Reel – It won the Eliot Prize in 2004. He said that the King read my work and it could be that he read Reel. But there was nothing concrete.

CT: But you are a translator as well, so there is a great balance.

GS: People warned me against translations. They said, once you start doing it people will regard you as a translator and that is something lower in their eyes.

CT: Interesting. I think, it is still the same in Hungary, while here, due to the translators’ campaign we have achieved that the translators are named on the cover of a book. What was the highlight of your career?

GS: Winning the TS Eliot Prize in 2004. Two things changed my life as a poet: one was to go back to Hungary in 1984. My writing changed after that.

CT: Do you think that is because of the language?

GS: It is a complicated thing to know. The first time we went back in 1968 and at that time hearing the language that we did not speak at home was re-orientating. And of course, in 1984 I went there consciously as a writer; by then I had written three books. I was surrounded by the language and although I could not speak it very well, I understood 70%. The city was something I suddenly remembered, and it gave me a sense of history, because in 1984 the buildings were still full of bullet holes, as you will remember, too, and I found that incredibly moving. It was a great emotional territory, and I developed an even closer relationship with the language and the country while I was translating.

CT: You said you understood 70 %, so did you study Hungarian here in England?

GS: No, never. My parents spoke to each other in Hungarian, but not to us. Well, when I went back in 1984, I could tell when people were being ironic. The pronunciation, the manner of saying, the gestures. And the same thing happened to me in English too. I would have been the first foreign immigrant writing poetry in English, Conrad is one, but I don’t know whoever else. So, that was a major thing, going back to Hungary, it was like being continually drunk and feeling good.

CT: Do you think it has something to do with the melody of the language?

GS: I recognise a Hungarian sensibility to music in my blood as a gift that helped me as a translator because I understand the subtext – of course I make mistakes, but if I do not understand the subtext then I am only guessing and I have to find my own subtext which might not be what the poet intended. So, going to Hungary opened up a new path for me and it gave me a status that I did not think I had, and I am not even certain of it now, but I do know that people became more interested.

And you won the Geoffrey Faber and the TS Eliot and the James Tait Black and the International Booker Prize for translation and now a gold medal.

GS: Yes, my first poetry books were very well received, but I never take that for granted. Although, sometimes I think, this is like a retirement gold medal.

CT: No, I’m sure it is not. Thank you for this interview, George.

Csilla Toldy 

Csilla Toldy is a writer and translator from Hungary, living in Northern Ireland. Her publications include three volumes of poetry: Red Roots – Orange Sky (2013), The Emigrant Woman’s Tale (2015) and Vertical Montage (Lapwing),  Angel Fur and other stories (Stupor Mundi, 2019). Her novel Bed Table Door, long listed for the Bath Novel award, and winner of the Desmond Elliott Residency, explores the idea of freedom against the backdrop of the Cold War and Thatcher’s England. (Wrecking Ball Press, 2023).

In 2021 she was an Emerging Translator Mentee with the National Centre for Writing, UK. Her translations from German and Hungarian were published in Modern Poetry in Translation, Cyphers and Pamenar Magazine, Hungarian Literature Online and Asymptote.