The Anti-Laureate. (Tony Harrison: Selected Poems - Tony Harrison)

Member Name: jatkinson100

Product:	Tony Harrison: Selected Poems - Tony Harrison
Date:	08/11/00 (909 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: His style, content and accessability, Harrison's work, and this volume especially is a wonderful work.

Disadvantages: V. is the only poem of Harrison's most people have heard of, so some may be put off by it. If so, I urge you to read this book, especially his moving sonnets from The School of Eloquence.

'Selected Poems' includes some of Harrisons best, and best known, work. In this volume you will find the entertaining, explicit, and often written about 'V.', as well as his poems from 'The School of Eloquence' Selected Poems is a good selection of his work, and includes many greatly acclaimed poems, as well as his poignant, but less well known poems.

'V.' is by far Harrison's best known work, due in no small part to the attention it recieved from viewers, in the media, and even in Parliament, after it was aired by Channel 4. In it Harrison visits his family burial plot (in the Beeston, I think, area of Leeds), and speaks about the day you'll look to see if his name is on there. He describes the sights from on top of the hill, the landscape, the city centre and his old school, and the fact that the stones are toppling due to subsidance from the pits below. He also speaks of the grafitti on the graves, 'V.' being prominent, as well as some other, more clolourful language. The v's denote Leeds United's opponents throughout the season, but Harrison reads more into this:
"These are all the Versuses of life
from LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White
and (as I've known to my cost) man v. wife..."
He also notes the prominance of the word UNITED (as in Leeds United) sprayed liberally around, and in particular, on his parent's headstone. He begins to wipe it off, but stops, believing that it is some sign that they are united in heaven, and decides to leave it there. He never makes it clear, however, whether his reasons for leaving it are purely 'poetic', or if he just doesn't have the time to remove it. The main part of the text is a dialogue between Harrison and one of the Skinheads who sprays the grave. The two argue about their art, and if Harrison's poems, of which many are against the upper classes and for a fair crack of the whip for the working classes, d

o anymore to combat social injustice than the skinheads rants about other races. The skinhead can be read as being a different Tony Harrison, how Harrison could have turned out had he not gone to Grammar school and University. This is further shown by Harrison goading his oponent into signing his name on his 'work', and the names are the same.

The School of Eloquence poems are several groups of sonnets, about a variety of subjects but each is its own poem and could stand alone when under criticism. My favourite is 'Them and [uz] I & II' which has Harrison revisiting his school in his mind, and saying what he wished he'd said to his school masters then. Harrison was a working class child who gained a scholarship to Leeds Grammar School, but was torn between his life at home and his new peer group at the school. Harrison shows how he becomes better than his teachers, beating them at their own game, by becoming the better scholar. Chastised because of his Leeds dialect, Harrison noted how some of our greatest poets, "Cockney Keats" and Wordsworth making matter/ water a full rhyme, spoke and wrote in dialect, thus outdoing his elders and betters. The poems are dedicated to "professors Richard Hoggart and Leon Cortez", the former a Leeds working class child made good, like Harrison, and who wrote about the dificulties of being a scholarship kid and on the different dialects of this country, and the latter a stage performer and comedian who 'translated' Shakespeare into Cockney to make it more widely accessible. In the first two lines, Harrison speaks of Demosthenes, making the conection between himself and the famous Greek orartor who had to overcome his stutter, which he did by putting pebbles in his mouth and shouting against the roaring sea.

One can not read Harrison without becoming acutely aware of the relationship he had with his parents. The best which show this dificult yet loving rel
ation
ship are 'Book Ends','Illuminations' and 'Long Distance'. All of them detail the love he had for his parents, and the difficulties he had conversing with his father who thought his education and poetry as a waste of time and sissy. If you are a parent, get your child to read Illuminations which is about trips to Blackpool. Harrison shows himself as a spoilt and know it all child, and speaks of his regret of acting in such a way after their deaths when, of course, it is too late to make it up. The poems explain in a wonderful way the proverbs 'You don't know what you've got until it's gone' and 'Be careful what you wish for..." as Harrison as child wishes his father dead for scolding him (as we all have done in childish outbursts).

Harrison's Selected Poems is a wonderful work, and I would urge any one to read it: it will move you, and if you cry, I'm sure you won't be the first. There is room for laughter in there aswell, though. It does not include, however, one of his greatest poems about the Bosnia crisis (due to date of publication, not it being deliberately left out), The Cycles of Donji Vakuf (found in 'Laureate's Block and Other Writings'). It is not hard to see why Harrison was tipped to succeed Hughes as Poet Laureate before his anti-Monarchy and Republican (for UK, not Ireland and IRA etc) writings and comments, including 'Laureate's Block', ruled him out of the running. He has stated many times that he would refuse the position were it offered to him any way.

I will leave you with one of Harrison's poems from Laureate's Block (due to its shortness, not because it is any better than those in this volume).

WINE & POETRY II

One glass and no refill
is life for men,
so keep on pouring till
Death says 'when'.

by Tony Harrison (after Amphis, 4th C. BC)

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