A Britsih
poet, born in
Leeds on 30 April 1937. His most famous single
poem is "
v." (1985), about obscenities
spray-painted on his parents'
graves. He was spoken of as a possible successor to
Ted Hughes as
poet laureate, but made clear his attitude with a scathing verse attack on the
monarchy, and on the new laureate
Andrew Motion.
He is also a translator and playwright; his plays include Phaedra Britannica (1975); Yan Tan Tethera (1983); and The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (1990), in which archaeologists are searching at the papyrus graveyard of Oxyrhynchus for the lost play Ichneutae (The Trackers) of Euripides. His translations include the Oresteia and a modern version of the Mystery Plays.
Tony Harrison lives in Newcastle. He writes in a voice that is clearly, unmistakably his Yorkshire accent, but without being "dialect". He has lived and taught in Nigeria, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, and Brazil. His second wife is the singer Teresa Stratas.
The poet Simon Armitage recalls* being inspired by seeing a television program of Tony Harrison, years before he knew the name, in which Harrison was in a pub, reading his poems (primarily "v."), and the boozers in the pub were crying.
* In a New Statesman article in 1997.