Bad Machine

by George Szirtes

The body is the 'bad machine' of George Szirtes' latest book of poems. The sudden death of his elderly father and of his younger friend, the poet Michael Murphy, remind him how machines - sources of energy and delight in their prime - go so easily wrong; and that change in the body is a signal for moving on. But language too is a body. Here, politi, assimilation, desire, creatureliness and the pleasure and loss of the body, mingle in various attenuated forms such as lexicon, canzone, acrosti, mirror poems, postcards, and a series of 'minimenta' after Anselm Kiefer whose love of history as rubble and monument haunts this collection. George Szirtes is one of our most inventive -and constantly reinventing -poets, and Bad Machine shows him developing new themes and new ways of writing in poems which stretch the possibilities of form and question language and its mastery. Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 12, 2013

About the author

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds. His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year.

By this time he was married with two children. After the publication of his second book, November and May, 1982, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Since then he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005.

Having returned to his birthplace, Budapest, for the first time in 1984, he has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. His own work has been translated into numerous languages.

Beside his work in poetry and translation he has written Exercise of Power, a study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, and, together with Penelope Lively, edited New Writing 10 published by Picador in 2001.

George Szirtes lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch. Together they ran The Starwheel Press. Corvina has recently produced Budapest: Image, Poem, Film, their collaboration in poetry and visual work.

Reviews

[Dheeraj Paleri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Got the book from K Satchidanandan. The author was strange to me. But, when I started turning the pages, an embarrassment caught me. The form of the poems were quite strange. Usually when we read poetry, a kind of homogenity could be seen in a single authors single book. And the time period could be calculated from that. But, here Szirtes plays over form, theme and the narrative style itself is unique for each poem and distinguishes it from the next... Won't say this is the best poetry I've ever read, but the treatment towards poetry was quite new for me and poems are worth reading too..

"I realise
the sea is more than sight,
and some things
always vanish"
-Postcard:The Rower
George Szirtes

[Chris Wardhaugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only three stars, not because it lacks quality, but because I just couldn't get into it.

[Anne Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely better and sharper in the short form poetry than in the longer pieces. In the longer poems, the author gets lost in the shape and pattern of the words and it all comes across as muddled and not a little smug. However, the short poems are worth reading.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a huge amount that's profound here. A lot of formal play, which either interests you or it doesn't. The poems in the first section are the best, and 'The Lump' is the best of those. 'Children of Albion' is quite charming, but nothing to write home about.