George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England with his parents and brother as a refugee after the failed revolution of 1956. Trained as an artist, he began publishing poems in the early seventies. His first book, THE SLANT DOOR, won the Faber Prize, since when there have been a dozen or so others, the most recent of which, REEL, was awarded the T S Eliot Prize for 2004. He is also a prize-winning translator of poetry and fiction from the Hungarian. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the English Association. His NEW AND COLLECTED POEMS are published by Bloodaxe in November 2008, along with a study of his work, READING GEORGE SZIRTES, by John Sears. He lives in Norfolk with his artist wife, Clarissa Upchurch, and teaches on the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His website, www.georgeszirtes.co.uk, carries a full CV, information about books and a regular blog (under News).