Tony Harrison

Tony Harrison. Courtesy Bloodaxe Books.

Tony Harrison (born 30 April 1937) FRSL is an English poet and playwright. He is noted for controversial works such as the poems V and Fram, as well as his versions of ancient Greek tragedies, including the Oresteia and Hecuba. 

Life

Harrison was born in Leeds, and educated at Leeds Grammar School and the University of Leeds, where he read Classics and took a diploma in Linguistics.

For some years he has lived in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Writing

The material of much of his early poetry is provided by the memories of his working-class childhood. But he mastered classical learning without abandoning a relationship to where he came from, and he writes in a strong English voice that is learned in Latin and Greek sources yet without a hint of 'Oxbridge'. His poems and translations show a powerful command of rhyme and an expert adaptation of colloquial speech. His best known collections are The Loiners (1970) and The School of Eloquence and the Penguin Selected Poems. Perhaps the poem that best illustrates his range, energy and ability to bring the joy of life and the anger with what is made of it together, is his A Kumquat for John Keats, written in Florida when he was 42.

Cited from Professor Rick Rylance's analysis, focusing on "Book Ends" and "V", as well as the themes of political and personal division. "Tony Harrison is deservedly known as the poet of a distinctive kind of post-war experience. The son of a baker, raised in working-class Leeds, his work dramatises aspects of growing up in that life and the tension between it and the very different culture he entered through his educational success as a star pupil, first at Leeds Grammar School and then at university. Though often highly personal, his poetry explores themes representative of his generation's experience of increasing social mobility through education that was a feature of post-war life. Typically, this takes the form of meditations on exclusion, like that of Harrison's own family whose origins did not permit much cultural mobility." An example is the short poem on the cremation of his father, Marked with a D.

One of his best-known works is the long poem V. (1985), written during the miners' strike of 1984-85, and describing a trip to see his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery "now littered with beer cans and vandalised by obscene graffiti". The title has several possible interpretations: victory, versus, verse etc. Proposals to screen a filmed version of V. by Channel 4 in October 1987 drew howls of outrage from the tabloid press, some broadsheet journalists, and MPs, apparently concerned about the effects its "torrents of obscene language" and "streams of four-letter filth" would have on the nation's youth. Indeed, an Early Day Motion entitled "Television Obscenity" was proposed on the 27th October 1987 by a group of Conservative MPs, who condemned Channel 4 and the Independent Broadcasting Authority. The motion was opposed by a single MP, Mr. Norman Buchan, who suggested that MPs had either failed to read or failed to understand (V.). The broadcast went ahead, and the brouhaha settled quickly after enough column inches had been written about the broadcast and reaction to the broadcast. Gerald Howarth said that Harrison was "Probably another bolshie poet wishing to impose his frustrations on the rest of us". When told of this, Harrison retorted that Howarth was "Probably another idiot MP wishing to impose his intellectual limitations on the rest of us". Thom Yorke, the frontman and lyricist of Radiohead, considers Harrison as one of his heroes, describing V as both "straightforward and wonderful"'.(Citation needed)

His adaption, The Mysteries, of the English Medieval Mystery plays, based on the York and Wakefield Mystery cycles, were first performed at the Royal National Theatre in 1985; in a promenade production in the Cottesloe Theatre. They were revived the following year, in the much larger space of the Lyceum Ballroom.

In 1998, he wrote and directed a film, Prometheus, based on his poem of the same name, which links the myth of Prometheus - chained on a rock to have his liver eaten by the vulture Ethon as a punishment for the theft of fire - with the enchainment of workers in the Promethian industries - the closed coal mines of Yorkshire; the present day effects of heavy industry in Copşa Mică in Romania; to the "gas ovens" of Auschwitz, to Dresden and to Bomber Harris. The film involved driving a thirty foot golden statue of Prometheus from the industrial north of England to Greece, via Germany and a number of eastern European countries.

His translation of Hecuba (2005), which emphasised the relevance of Euripides' drama to the Iraq War, was poorly received.

His play Fram debuted in 2008 at the Royal National Theatre in London.

Critical reception

Richard Eyre calls Harrison's 1990 play, The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus "among the five most imaginative pieces of drama in the 90s". Jocelyn Herbert, famous designer of the British theatrical scene, comments that Harrison is aware of the dramatic visual impact of his ideas: "The idea of satyrs jumping out of boxes in Trackers is wonderful for the stage. Some writers just write and have little idea what it will look like, but Tony always knows exactly what he wants." Edith Hall has written that she is convinced that Harrison's 1998 film-poem Prometheus is "the most important artistic reaction to the fall of the British working class" at the end of the twentieth century, and considers it as "the most important adaptation of classical myth for a radical political purpose for years" and Harrison's "most brilliant artwork, with the possible exception of his stage play The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus".

Professor Roger Griffin Department of History Oxford Brookes University in his paper The palingenetic political community: rethinking the legitimation of totalitarian regimes in inter-war Europe calls Harrison's film-poem "magnificent" and comments that he is trying to tell his audience 

"To avoid falling prey to the collective mirage of a new order, to stay wide awake while others succumb to the lethe of the group mind, to resist the gaze of modern Gorgons".

Recognition

• 1972 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (for The Loiners 1970)
• 1983 European Poetry Translation Prize (Aeschylus's The Oresteia 1981)
• 1982 Whitbread Prize for Poetry (The Gaze of the Gorgon 1992)
• 2004 Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award
• 2007 Wilfred Owen Poetry Award
• 2009 The inaugural PEN/Pinter prize

Publications

Poetry

• Earthworks (chapbook). Leeds, UK: Northern House, 1964.
• Newcastle is Peru (chapbook). Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Durham Eagle Press, 1969; 2nd edition, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Northern House, 1974.
• The Loiners. London: London Magazine Editions, 1970.
• Bow Down. London: Collings, 1977.
• From 'The School of Eloquence', and other poems. London: Collings, 1978.
• Looking up (with Philip Sharpe). West Malvern, UK: Migrant Press, 1979.
• Continuous: 50 Sonnets from 'The School of Eloquence'. London: Rex Collings, 1981.
• A Kumquat for John Keats. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe, 1981.
• Selected Poems. Harmondsworth, UK, & New York: Viking / Penguin, 1984; 2nd edition, London: Penguin, 2006.
• Anno Forty Two: Seven new poems (chapbook). Scargill Press, 1987.
• V. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1985; 2nd edition, 1991.
  • V, and other poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1990.
• The Fire Gap: A poem with two tales. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe, 1985.
• Dramatic Verse, 1973-85. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe, 1985.
• Ten Sonnets from 'The School of Eloquence'. London: Anvil, 1987.
• A cold Coming (chapbook). Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1991.
• Square Rounds. London: Faber & Faber, 1992.
• The Gaze of the Gorgon. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe , 1992.
• Black Daisies for the Bride. London & Boston: Faber, 1993.
• A Maybe Day in Kazakhstan. London: Channel 4 Television, 1994.
• The Shadow of Hiroshima, and other film: Poems. London: Faber, 1995.
• Permanently Bard: Selected poetry. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Bloodaxe, 1995.
• Prometheus. London: Faber, 1998.
• Laureate's Block, and other occasional poems. London & New York: Penguin, 2000.
• Under the Clock: New poems. London: Penguin, 2005.
• Collected Poems. London: Viking, 2007.
• Collected Film Poetry. London: Faber, 2007.

Plays

• The Passion: Selected from the 15th century cycle of York mystery plays in a version. London: R. Collings, 1977.
• Theatre Works, 1973-1985. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1986.
• The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus. London: Faber, 1991.
• Plays (edited by Bernard O'Donoghue & Michael Kustow). (5 volumes), London: Faber, 1996- . Volume I, 1999; Volume II, 2002; Volume III, 1996; Volume IV, 2002.
• Fram. London: Faber, 2008.

Non-fiction

• Winslow Homer in England. Ocean Park, ME: Hornby Editions, 2004.

Translated

• Jean Racine, Phaedra Britannica. London: Collings, 1976.
• The Common Chorus: A version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. London & Boston: Faber, 1992.
• Victor Hugo, The Prince's Play [Le roi s'amuse]. London: Faber, 1996.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Rear Window - A COLD COMING BY TONY HARRISON

See also

• List of British poets

References

• Tony Harrison (edited by Neil Astley). Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books (Bloodaxe Critical Anthologies: 1), 1991. ISBN 1-85224-079-2.

External links

Poems

• "Timer"
• Tony Harrison profile & poem ("Long Distance") at the Academy of American Poets
• Tony Harrison at PoemHunter (6 poems)

Audio / video

• Tony Harrison at YouTube

Books

• Tony Harrison at Amazon.com

About

• Tony Harrison at Faber & Faber
• Tony Harrison at Bloodaxe Books
• Tony Harrison at the British Council
• Guardian newspaper interview