Tony Harrison
Tony Harrison is a prominent English poet and playwright known for his exploration of working-class themes and his rich literary contributions. Born in Leeds into a working-class family, Harrison's academic prowess led him to a scholarship at Leeds University, where he studied the classics. This educational journey created a tension between his roots and his achievements, which he often reflects in his poetry. He is recognized as an unofficial laureate of working-class England, addressing the struggles and issues faced by laboring individuals while also critiquing the darker aspects of society.
Harrison's diverse literary career includes translating and adapting classical works, with notable projects such as "The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus," which transformed fragmented texts into coherent dramas. His poetry, particularly the controversial piece "V," gained public attention for its candid portrayal of social issues, such as youth vandalism. Throughout his career, he has maintained a strong connection to his working-class origins, continually producing poetry that resonates with contemporary urban struggles.
In addition to poetry, Harrison has worked extensively in theater and opera, collaborating with prestigious institutions and earning recognition through various literary awards, including the PEN Pinter Prize and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. His body of work remains influential, showcasing his ability to blend sophistication with deep emotional resonance, making him a significant figure in modern English literature.
Tony Harrison
Poet
- Born: April 30, 1937
- Place of Birth: Leeds, Yorkshire, England
ENGLISH POET AND PLAYWRIGHT
Biography
Tony Harrison was born into a working-class family in the northern English industrial city of Leeds. His father was a baker, and it was presumed that Harrison, too, would grow up as a member of the British working class. However, he proved to be an excellent student and obtained a scholarship that allowed him to study at Leeds University, where he read the classics. Harrison's educational achievements, although a source of pride for his family, also caused him personal difficulty since they separated him from his class background, which lingered as a strong element in English society in the twentieth century. This problem of having been, in a sense, educated outside his class has been a constant theme for him poetically, and he still identifies very strongly with the concerns of the laboring members of modern society, especially in Britain. He has been called the unofficial laureate of working-class England, championing their blighted, confined plight in modern society while also being free to criticize the uncivilized behavior of its worst elements.
As a university lecturer, Harrison taught first in Nigeria and then in the former Czechoslovakia. His literary interests were very wide, and he was deeply interested in languages. He wrote poetry and drama and translated literature from early in his career. While in Nigeria, he collaborated with Irish poet James Simmons to produce Aikin Mata: The Lysistrata of Aristophanes (1966), a translation of Aristophanes’s Lysistratē (411 Before the Common Era) into the pidgin English of one of the local tribes. Harrison’s interest in translating and adapting great literature of the past into modern texts led him to work in theater and opera, where he developed a reputation both as a translator and as a librettist of original texts.
Harrison's work with such celebrated opera houses as the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York led to his 1984 marriage to Teresa Stratas, one of the great sopranos of the latter half of the twentieth century. (He had previously married Rosemarie Crossfield in 1960; the couple had two children before their divorce in the late 1970s.) He has also gone beyond simple translation to develop dramas, sometimes based on classical fragments. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (1988), which was successfully produced by London’s National Theatre in 1990, is an example of his skill at turning fragments of classical material into coherent works of art; the ancient satyr play on which it was based, Sophocles’s Ichneutae (trackers), had been so badly preserved that it was simply not playable before Harrison’s intrusion.
It might seem that such work, at the center of the artistic worlds of London and New York, would inevitably lead away from the more mundane themes of his northern English beginnings. Still, Harrison continued to write poetry about the struggles of working-class English life. In the mid-1980s, he created a public sensation with V (1985), a long poem about the mindless vandalism of working-class youths, after discovering that football (soccer) hooligans had defaced his parents’ graves. The poem was broadcast on British television, and its frankness in addressing the problem and its unabashed use of vulgar language caused a public scandal at a time when poetry had little hold on the common reader, let alone the television viewer. V showed Harrison’s determination to make his poetry a part of the public discourse, and it revealed his continued determination to make poetry from the problems of his working-class origin, which he knows have not become any easier for the millions of people struggling in contemporary urban society.
Harrison’s unusual range of artistic expression and themes allows for the use of considerable academic skills, as evidenced in his translations and adaptations, and for a wide range of poetic styles. Harrison is capable of enormous sophistication and a rather odd manipulation of witty, metaphysical metaphor that is sometimes reminiscent of the cleverness of John Donne. But he is also a poet who can write with great simplicity and deep feeling, particularly in his poems about working-class angst and unhappiness. He is not easily defined, and for all his urban concerns, either at the highest level of social accomplishment or the lowest level of urban squalor, he can occasionally produce poems such as “Cypress and Cedar” that reveal a gift for nature poetry. Harrison continued to publish poetry collections throughout the early twenty-first century, including Under the Clock (2005), Selected Poems (2006), Collected Poems (2007), and Collected Film Poetry (2007). He also continued publishing translations and writing for film and television. His play, Fram (2008) premiered at the Royal National Theatre, and, in 2017, Harrison published the pamphlet Polygons.
Harrison has won numerous literary awards throughout his career, including the inaugural PEN Pinter Prize in 2009, awarded annually to a British writer who “casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world, and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination . . . to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.’” In 2015, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature in celebration of his full body of work, and, in 2016, he was awarded the Premio Feronia in Rome.
Bibliography
Astley, Neil, editor. Tony Harrison. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1991.
Byrne, Sandie. H, v., & O: The Poetry of Tony Harrison. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.
Byrne, Sandie, editor. Tony Harrison: Loiner. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.
Cunningham, Valentine. British Writers of the Thirties. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
Donoghue, Denis. “Venisti Tandem.” Rev. of Selected Poems, by Tony Harrison, et al. London Review of Books, 7 Feb. 1985, pp. 18–19.
Flood, Alison. “Tony Harrison Wins Inaugural PEN/Pinter Prize.” The Guardian, 22 Sept. 2009, www.theguardian.com/books/2009/sep/22/tony-harrison-pen-pinter-prize. Accessed 23 July 2024.
Kelleher, Joe. Tony Harrison. Plymouth: Northcote, 1996.
McAloon, Jonathan. “‘Obscene’ Poet Tony Harrison Wins David Cohen Prize for Literature 2015.” Telegraph, 26 Feb. 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookprizes/11436858/Tony-Harrison-wins-David-Cohen-Prize-for-Literature-2015.html. Accessed 23 July 2024.
Rowland, Antony. Tony Harrison and the Holocaust. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2001.
Seegar, J.R. L. “An Interview with Author and Poet David L. Harrison.” SouthWest Writers, 19 Sept. 2023, www.southwestwriters.com/an-interview-with-author-and-poet-david-l-harrison. Accessed 23 July 2024.
Thwaite, Anthony. Poetry Today: A Critical Guide to British Poetry, 1960–1984. New York: Longman, 1985.