Portrait of My Father in an English Landscape

This text includes, among other poems, linked sonnets. They are about childhood, language, and growing up in a foreign country - England - and particularly they are about the author's own father, captured in images, anecdotes, and sudden, vivid fragmentary stories. The bravura formal structure of these remarkable sequences continues Szirtes' tradition of writing long poem sequences, and contributes to his personal history of Europe. George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948, and came to England as a refugee after the 1956 Hungarian revolution. He was educated and lived in England ever since. At present he lives in Norfolk with his artist wife Clarissa Upchurch, and is in charge of the writing course at the Norwich School of Art & Design.