Tony Harrison
born April 30, 1937, Leeds, West
Yorkshire, Eng.
English poet, translator, dramatist, and
filmmaker whose work expressed the tension
between his working-class background and the
formal sophistication of literary verse.
Harrison was educated at Leeds Grammar
School and received a degree in linguistics
from Leeds University, where he read the
Classics. He wrote for the National Theater
in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New
York, and British television, always writing
in verse. His first collection of poems,
Earthworks, was published in 1964, and he
drew acclaim with The Loiners (1970). He
traveled widely and continued to write
poetry while living in Europe, Africa, and
America.
From the School of Eloquence and Other
Poems (1976) features some of Harrison’s
most popular poems and illustrates the
enduring influence of his background—in
particular, his parents—as well as his
concern with poetry itself. Published in
1985, Harrison’s most famous poem, “v.”
(1985), was inspired by the discovery upon
his return to England of vandalism at his
parents’ graves. The poem alludes to Thomas
Gray’s “An Elegy Written in a Country Church
Yard” while addressing the effects of the
failure of the mining industry on the
culture of the British working class.
Harrison wrote, directed, and narrated
versions of his poems, including “v.” and
“The Shadow of Hiroshima,” for film and
television. In 1995 The Guardian newspaper
commissioned him to write poems from the
front line of the armed conflict in Bosnia.
The book The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other
Film/Poems won the 1996 Heinemann Award,
given by the Royal Society of Literature. In
1992 Harrison won the Whitbread Poetry Award
(now the Costa Book Award) for The Gaze of
the Gorgon.
