In 1982 Tony Harrison said: ‘Because of my background, poetry is not something I can take for granted. I have strong distrust and misgivings. I want my poems and myself to be exposed to all the gale-force winds of what negates poetry: social indifference, self-destructiveness, time, nothingness – the whole fatuity of the belief that writing poetry will do anything.’ We spent the evening exploring this edge in his work. Despite comments about his anger and bile, everyone appreciated his fire and fight. ‘The School of Eloquence’ sonnets, exploring his working class background in Leeds, the splits arising from his education and family life, were felt to be particularly powerful; the poems of loss for his mother and father especially moving.
We listened to a recording of Harrison reading ‘Timer’ and discussed the poem’s physical details – the incinerator and the ash, the egg timer and the wedding ring, potent symbols of impermanence and ideas about ‘eternity’. Moving on to ‘Them and [UZ]’, we had to tease out the different voices dramatising the poem, enjoying their dry humour and defiant energy.
There’d been a request to make time for the long poem ‘A Kumquat for John Keats’ so we ended with an ensemble reading. Again everyone was affected by the poem’s dynamic argument, Harrison’s address across the centuries to Keats, affirming his suggestion that only by knowing melancholy, can we truly know joy. The rhyme and rhythm of the piece and the sensuous details evoked an unusually positive relationship with the world: specifically here, West Coast America. Harrison himself has remarked that the poem charts ‘the rediscovery of love after a lot of bitter experiences. It arose from being in a particular place with a particular woman at a particular time.’
By the end of the evening the group were hungry for more, looking forward to hearing the man in the flesh on Thursday evening (7pm) in Culture Lab. The Selected Poems ????? ????????????? ???????? ?????? ????? ??????? contains work written some time ago and we were all keen to see what Harrison is currently working on. Do add more comments both before and after the reading here if you’re so moved.
And remember that on Tuesday 24th February, our next Poetry Room will be led by Anna looking at Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.
