Tony Harrison: v - conflicting voices and the political imperative -

1
Tony Harrison v- conflicting voices and the
political imperative -

• Contemporary Literature in English
• Dr. Natália Pikli
• ELTE

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Tony Harrison (b. 1937)page, stage and screen
its all one poetry

• Motto of V
• 'My father still reads the dictionary every day.
  He says your life depends on your power to master
  words.
• Arthur Scargill
• Sunday Times, 10 January 1982
• Examining and dramatising the relationships
  between
• language/power/politics BARD
• (Rutter, Carol (1995). Permanently Bard.
  Newcastle upon Tyne Bloodaxe Books.)
• 2010 European Prize for Literature
• 2015 The DavidCohen Prize for Literature (to a
  writer, novelist, short-story writer, poet,
  essayist or dramatist in recognition of an entire
  body of work, written in the English language.)

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Major works

• The Loiners (1970)
• From the School of Eloquence and Other
  Poems (1981)
• Continuous (50 Sonnets from the School of
  Eloquence and Other Poems) (1981)
• A Kumquat for John Keats (1981)
• V (1985)
• Dramatic Verse,1973-85 (1985)
• Square Rounds (1992)
• The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992)
• Black Daisies for the Bride (1993)
• The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other
  Film/Poems (1995)
• Laureate's Block and Other Occasional
  Poems (2000)
• Under the Clock (2005)
• Selected Poems (2006)
• Collected Poems (2007)
• Collected Film Poetry (2007)
• Drama translations/adaptations Aeschyluss The
  Oresteia, The Mysteries, Molieres Misanthrope,
  Euripidess Hecuba, Phaedra Britannica (from
  Racines)

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Author Statementhttp//literature.britishcouncil.
org/tony-harrison

• Tony Harrison my upbringing among so-called
  'inarticulate' people has given me a passion for
  language that communicates directly and
  immediately. I prefer the idea of men speaking to
  men to a man speaking to God, or even worse to
  Oxford's anointed. And books are only a part of
  what I see as poetry. It seems to me no accident
  that some of the best poetry in the world is in
  some of its drama from the Greek onwards. In it I
  find a reaffirmation of the power of the word,
  eroded by other media and by some of the
  speechless events of our worst century.

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a man of contradictions

• - Leeds, run-down industrial city, son of a baker
  v scholarship (Leeds Grammar School, Leeds
  University) the classics/Oxbridge education
• - inherited/childhood lge (non-Standard) v RP
• - scholar, poeta doctus v reaching mass
  audiences (National Theatre, TV film/poems)

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Interview (Guardian, 31 March 2007)

• "There are risks of sentimentality," he says.
  "But my metre starts ticking in the presence of
  dumbness and inarticulacy. Coming from a very
  inarticulate family made me try to speak for
  those who can't express themselves, and created a
  need for articulation at its most ceremonial -
  poetry."
• GIVING VOICE TO the underpriviliged, Hiroshima
  victims, Alzheimer victims,
• reflecting on Salman Rushdies fatwa, the Iraq
  war, the Bosnian conflict, etc.
• against an "English reluctance to marry politics
  and poetry. Why shouldn't poetry address what
  happened yesterday, and be published in the
  newspaper?" 
• http//www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/mar/31/poetry
  .tonyharrison

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Heredity

• How you became a poet's a mystery!
• Wherever did you get your talent from?
• I say I had two uncles, Joe and Harry-
• one was a stammerer, the other dumb.

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Them uzfor Professors Richard Hoggart Leon
Cortez (excerpts)

• 4 words only of mi art aches and Mines
  broken,
• You barbarian, T.W.! He was nicely spoken.
• Cant have our glorious heritage done to death!
• Poetry is the speech of kings. Youre one of
  those
• Shakespeare gives the comic bits to prose!
• All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
• s been dubbed by ?s into RP,
• Recieved Pronunciation, please believe ?s
• Your speech is in the hands of the Receivers.
• We say ?s not uz, T.W! That shut my trap.
• So right, yer buggers, then! Well occupy
• Your lousy leasehold Poetry.
• RIP RP, RIP T. W.
• Im Tony Harrison no longer you!

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v (1985) long poem

• written during the miners strike 1984-85
• Thatcher and transnational corporations v
  miners/trade unions
• 1970, Enoch Powells speech the enemy within,
  1980s Thatcherite we v the culturally
  different who are dangerous to liberty
• collapse of such cities as Leeds (coal,
  manufacture, cotton, etc.)
• Arthur Scargill National Union of Mineworkers
  (NUM)
• political statement or poetry? going against
  the grain

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v

• Going against the grain
• - trochees instead of iambs, alliteration
  (Middle Ages/Northerner), colloquial speech
• - bard (This pens all I have of magic wand.)
• Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
• to find my slab behind the family dead,
• butcher, publican, and baker, now me, bard
• adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.

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v narrative and context

• drama poet/persona visiting his parents grave
  in historical Leeds cemetery (Beeston Hill,
  overloking the town/the university/the football
  field) tombstones vandalised by
  skinheads/football fans VANTAGE POINT
• personal reflection on what he finds ? dialogue
  (skin v poet, Doppelgänger? his other alternative
  self if no educational success?) ? home ?
  summary? his own epitaph
• Modelled on and mocking the poetic tradition (cf.
  T.S. Eliot!) adapting the genre of
  funeral/pastoral elegy
• Thomas Gray Elegy Written in a Country
  Churchyard (1742-1750).

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Thomas Gray Elegy writtendescription, a
peaceful dirge, melancholy, monologue, and an
epitaph for the poet

• Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's
  shade,
• Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
• Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
• The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
• Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
• Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
• The Epitaph
• Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
• A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
• Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
• And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
• Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
• Heav'n did a recompense as largely send
• He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
• He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a
  friend.

• Tony Harrisons v
• countryside?urban
• peaceful ? vandalised cemetery
• monologue ? dialogue (?)
• elegiac mood ? aggression
• losses, remembrance passive ?active

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VMocking poetic tradition/role and questioning
the significance and role of a poetByron/Wordswo
rth/Harrison/skin problems of IDENTIFICATION

• With Byron three graves on Ill not go short
• Of company, and Wordsworths opposite.
• Wordsworth built church organs, Byron tanned
• Luggage cowhide in the age of steam
• And there's HARRISON on some Leeds building
  sites
• I've taken in fun as blazoning my name,
• which I've also seen on books, in Broadway
  lights,
• so why can't skins with spraycans do the same?

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expletives/four-letter words language layers
of society (mayor, nameless ones, skins) cf.
rhymes!

• The language of this graveyard ranges from
• a bit of Latin for a former Mayor
• or those who laid their lives down at the Somme,
• the hymnal fragments and the gilded prayer,
• how people 'fell asleep in the Good Lord',
• brief chisellable bits from the good book
• and rhymes whatever length they could afford,
• to CUNT, PISS, SHIT and (mostly) FUCK!

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v as versus class/education/politics general
concerns

• Vs sprayed on the run at such a lick,
• the sprayer master of his flourished tool,
• get short-armed on the left like that red tick
• they never marked his work with much at school.
• These Vs are all the versuses of life
• From LEEDS v. DERBY, Black/White
• and (as I've known to my cost) man v. wife,
• Communist v. Fascist, Left v. Right,
• Class v. class as bitter as before,
• the unending violence of US and THEM,
• personified in 1984
• by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM,
• Hindu/Sikh, soul/body, heart v. mind,
• East/West, male/female, and the ground
• these fixtures are fought on's Man, resigned
• to hope from his future what his past never
  found.

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Dialogue 1.

• What is it that these crude words are revealing?
• What is it that this aggro act implies?
• Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling
• or just a cri-de-coeur because man dies?
• So what's a cri-de-coeur, cunt? Can't you speak
• the language that yer mam spoke. Think of 'er!
• Can yer only get yer tongue round fucking Greek?
• Go and fuck yourself with cri-de-coeur!
• 'She didn't talk like you do for a start!'
• I shouted, turning where I thought the voice had
  been.
• She didn't understand yer fucking 'art'!
• She thought yer fucking poetry obscene!

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Dialogue 2. role/dialect reversalcan you
represent the ones you come from/ separated from
by education and language? (Who needs / yer
fucking poufy words? Ah write mi own)

• 'Listen, cunt!' I said, 'before you start your
  jeering
• the reason why I want this in a book
• 's to give ungrateful cunts like you a hearing!'
• A book, yer stupid cunt, 's not worth a fuck!
• 'The only reason why I write this poem at all
• on yobs like you who do the dirt on death
• 's to give some higher meaning to your scrawl.'
• Don't fucking bother, cunt! Don't waste your
  breath!
• 'You piss-artist skinhead cunt, you wouldn't know
• and it doesn't fucking matter if you do,
• the skin and poet united fucking Rimbaud
• but the autre that je est is fucking you.
• Ah've told yer, no more Greek...That's yer last
  warning!
• Ah'll boot yer fucking balls to Kingdom Come.
• They'll find yer cold on t'grave tomorrer
  morning.
• So don't speak Greek. Don't treat me like I'm
  dumb.

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Identification?

• 'OK!' (thinking I had him trapped) 'OK!'
• 'If you're so proud of it, then sign your name
• when next you're full of HARP and armed with
  spray,
• next time you take this short cut from the game.'
• He took the can, contemptuous, unhurried
• and cleared the nozzle and prepared to sign
• the UNITED sprayed where mam and dad were buried.
• He aerosolled his name. And it was mine.

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racism/problems of multiculturalism/PC or
problem? todays skin v poets father

• But why inscribe these graves with CUNT
• and SHIT?
• Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure?
• This pitman's of last century daubed PAKI GIT,
• this grocer Broadbent's aerosolled with NIGGER?
• House after house FOR SALE where we'd played
  cricket
• with white roses cut from flour-sacks on our
  caps,
• with stumps chalked on the coal-grate for our
  wicket,
• and every one bought now by 'coloured chaps',
• dad's most liberal label as he felt
• squeezed by the unfamiliar, and fear
• of foreign food and faces, when he smelt
• curry in the shop where he'd bought beer.

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UNITED - changing signification - is poetic
application/appropriaton morally right? (football
club/metaphor)

• sprayed on his parents tombstone
• Though I dont believe in afterlife at all
• And know its cheating its hard not to make
• A sort of furtive prayer from this skins crawl,
• His UNITED mean in Heaven for their sake,
• an accident of meaning to redeem
• An act intended as mere desecration
• And make the thoughtless spraying of his team
• Apply to higher things, and to the nation.

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negative conclusion - UNITED

• Half versus half, the enemies within
• the heart that can't be whole till they unite.
• As I stoop to grab the crushed HARP lager tin
• the day's already dusk, half dark, half light.
• That UNITED that I'd wished onto the nation
• or as reunion for dead parents soon recedes.
• The word's once more a mindless desecration
• by some HARPoholic yob supporting Leeds.

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Motif of here Comes the Bride (3x)love
united?

• Home, home to my woman, where the fire's lit
• these still chilly mid-May evenings, home to you,
• The ones we choose to love become our anchor
• My alter ego wouldn't want to know it,
• His aerosol vocab would baulk at LOVE,
• the skin's UNITED underwrites the poet,
• the measures carved below the ones above.

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The Epitaph self-definition, self-articulation,
memory

• Next millenium youll have to search quite hard
• To find out where Im buried .
• Beneath your feet's a poet, then a pit.
• Poetry supporter, if you're here to find
• How poems can grow from (beat you to it!) SHIT
• find the beef, the beer, the bread, then look
  behind.
• death/the great leveller/material and spiritual
  united
• remembrance

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v

• versus
• verses
• victory sign
• four-letter sign
• red tick at school
• Heteroglossia (Bakhtin) plurality of voices
• semantic ambivalence puns and role/uncertainty
  of lge
• personal memory fiction or reality? a
  recreation of the event (lge never passive) or
  political/authorial statement
• author/narrator/character (cf. Fowles)

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The film, dir. R. Eyre, BBC Channel 4, 1987
great publicity

• Teddy Taylor Tory MP
• appealed to Channel 4
• chiefs to see sense
• a poem full of
• obscenities is clearly so
• objectionable that it will
• lead to the government
• being forced to take
• action it would prefer not
• to have to take.
• Charges of obscenity, bullying,
  misrepresentation, prejudice
• Gerald Howarth said that Harrison was "Probably
  another Bolshie poet wishing to impose his
  frustrations on the rest of us".

• Harrison retorted that Howarth was "Probably
  anotheridiot MP wishing to impose his
  intellectual limitations on the rest of us".
• Blake Morrison poet and critic in The Independent
  said Those MPs are right to believe that the
  poem is shocking, but not because of its
  language. It shocks because it describes
  unflinchingly what is meant by a divided society,
  because it takes the abstractions we have learned
  to live with unemployment, racial tension,
  inequality, deprivation and gives them a kind
  of physical existence on the page.
• Harold Pinter
• The criticism against the poem has been
• offensive, juvenile and, of course, philistine.
• It should certainly be broadcast.

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Tony Harrison in Hungary

• Lettre (Vol.52. 2004. Spring)
• Szabó T. Anna Hálaadás
• Mesterházi Mónika A fogfájás (short story)
• Ferencz Gyozo v (excerpts)
• http//www.epa.hu/00000/00012/00036/vers_harrison.
  htm