King Charles awards poetry medal

King Charles III has awarded His Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry for the year 2024.

The recipient is George Szirtes.

The Gold Medal for Poetry was established in 1933 by King George V and is given to a recipient in the United Kingdom or a Commonwealth Realm.

George Szirtes was awarded the medal for “his deeply personal pieces of work, informed by his dual perspective, looking both east and west.”

He was born in Hungary in 1948, and he moved to England following the Hungarian Uprising in 1956. He is an established writer and poet, and a memoir about his mother won the James Tait Black Prize for biography. He has published thirteen full-length collections of poetry.

On receiving the award, George Szirtes said: “I could not believe it when Simon Armitage shared the news. When our family came here as refugees in 1956 only my father spoke some English, although English was chronologically my second language it quickly become first in daily life. I had no notion of being a poet until one day in a school corridor, a friend showed me a poem and suddenly a door opened where there hadn’t been a door at all. I had no expectations, no background or formal teaching, so being the recipient of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry tops everything. I am deeply grateful to those who have chosen to award me in this way, it is wonderful to join my name with all those excellent poets honoured in the past and to become, in time, part of that past myself.”