Reel (poetry collection)

The first part of Reel contains poems in terza rima. The opening (title) poem takes a tour through Szirtes' native city, Budapest, which he left in 1956 with his family on his 8th birthday, during the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It is dedicated to his wife, the artist Clarissa Upchurch. The second poem is also a memorialization, but of a person: the German-born writer W. G. Sebald, who like Szirtes emigrated to England and like him lived in East Anglia. (Sebald was the author of a novel called Austerlitz, and the poem is called "Meeting Austerlitz".) The second part of the collection, "The Dream Hotel", contains poems in other forms, including a sonnet sequence about getting older. One critic called these poems "human and humane". It includes three poems inspired by Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian documentary photographer. ==Themes, style, form==

Reel, according to Paul Farley, a poet and critic who was on the jury that awarded Szirtes the T. S. Eliot Prize, is a collection concerned with memory and mnemonics. The title poem memorializes Budapest and contains Hungarian street and place names, which Szirtes weaves into the English language by adhering to terza rima, the rhyme scheme made famous by Dante's Divine Comedy: According to Farley, "memory plays out as footage", and he cites Szirtes, "bells of the city chime, round upon round. / The film rolls on. A car sweeps round the bend". ==Critical response==

Paul Farley, critiquing the collection for The Guardian, praised Szirtes as a "visionary formalist". The T. S. Eliot Prize is the most prestigious award for poetry by an Irish or English poet. Szirtes, when asked about the effects of the prize, said it brought him a lot more attention and assured him in the "poetic vocation [which] is psychologically insecure". ==References==