Poetry:
Earthworks, 1964
The Loiners, 1970
From “The School of Eloquence,” and Other Poems, 1978
Continuous: Fifty Sonnets from “The School of Eloquence,” 1981
Selected Poems, 1984
The Fire Gap: A Poem with Two Tails, 1985
Selected Poems, 1987
V., and Other Poems, 1990
The Gaze of the Gorgon, 1992
Black Daisies for the Bride, 1993
Permanently Bard: Selected Poetry, 1995
The Shadow of Hiroshima, and Other Film/Poems, 1995
Versus Verse: Satirical Rhymes of Three Anti-bodies in Opposition to Practically Everything, 1995 (with Geoffrey B. Riddehough and Geoffrey A. Spencer)
Prometheus, 1998
Laureate’s Block, and Other Occasional Poems, 2000
Drama:
Aikin Mata, pr. 1965 (with James Simmons; adaptation of Aristophanes’ play Lysistratē)
The Misanthrope, pr. 1973 (adaptation of Molière’s play Le Misanthrope)
Phaedra Britannica, pr. 1975 (adaptation of Jean Racine’s play Phèdre)
Bow Down, pr., pb. 1977 (libretto; music by Harrison Birtwistle)
The Passion, pr., pb. 1977 (adaptation of the York Mystery Plays)
The Bartered Bride, pr., pb. 1978 (libretto; music by Bedřich Smetana; adaptation of Karel Sabrina’s opera)
The Oresteia, pr., pb. 1981 (libretto; music by Birtwistle; adaptation of Aeschylus’s play)
Dramatic Verse, 1973-1985, pb. 1985
Plays, pb. 1985-2002 (4 volumes; volume 1 pb. as The Mysteries)
The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, pb. 1990 (based on Sophocles’ play Ichneutae)
Square Rounds, pb. 1992
The Common Chorus: A Version of Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” pb. 1992
The Prince’s Play, pr., pb. 1996 (adaptation of Victor Hugo’s play)
Teleplays:
The Big H, 1984 (libretto; music by Dominic Muldowney)
The Blasphemers’ Banquet, 1990
Prometheus, 1998
Translation:
Poems, 1975 (of Palladas of Alexandra)
Tony Harrison was born in the northern English industrial city of Leeds, into a working-class family. His father was a baker, and it was presumed that Harrison would grow up as a member of the British working class. He proved, however, to be an excellent student, and he obtained a scholarship that allowed him to study at Leeds University, where he read the classics. His educational achievements, although a source of pride for his family, were also to cause personal difficulty, since they separated him from his class background, still a very 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 lower-class England, championing their blighted, confined plight in modern society, while also feeling free to criticize the vulgarian Yahooism of its worst elements.
Tony Harrison
As a university lecturer, he taught first in Nigeria and then in 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. He and James Simmons collaborated on a translation of Aristophanes’ Lysistratē (411
What began, then, as a seemingly interesting, if modest gift as a poet of working-class themes, has led to a life of considerable sophistication, since he works with the Covent Garden Opera in London and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. This work led to his marriage to Teresa Stratas, one of the great sopranos of the last half of the twentieth century. He has also gone beyond simple translation to develop dramas, sometimes based on classical fragments. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, which was successfully produced by London’s National Theatre, is an example of his skill in retrieving snatches of classical material and turning them into actable works of art. This Sophocles satyr play had been so badly preserved that it was simply not playable prior to Harrison’s intrusion.
It might seem that such work, at the center of the artistic worlds of London and New York, would lead inevitably away from the more mundane themes of his northern English beginnings, but Harrison keeps a home in Newcastle and continues to write poetry about the struggles of working-class English life. In the mid-1980’s, he created a public sensation with a poem about the mindless vandalism of working-class youths, after discovering that his parents’ graves had been defaced by football (soccer) hooligans. The long poem, V., was broadcast on British television. Its frankness in dealing with the problem and its unabashed use of the vulgar language of the street caused a public scandal and gave the poem a general scrutiny and public exposure unusual in a time when poetry has little hold upon the common reader, let alone the television viewer. It showed Harrison’s determination to make his poetry a part of the public domain, and it revealed his continued determination to make poetry from the problems of his (in a sense) tribal origin, which he knows have not become any easier for the millions of people caught at the bottom of contemporary urban society.
Harrison’s unusual range of artistic expression and theme allows for the use of considerable scholastic skills, as evidenced in his translations and adaptations, and for a wide range of poetic styles. Harrison is capable of enormous sophistication and of 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 of 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 once in a while produce poems such as “Cypress and Cedar” that reveal a gift for nature poetry.