- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Editor’s Introduction
- 1 Harrison as Elegist
- 2 Close Encounters of the Verse Kind: On Meeting Tony Harrison
- 3 The Man Who Came to Read the Metre
- 4 Lost in the Original: Tony Harrison as a Classicist Poet
- 5 Tony Harrison and the <i>Guardian</i>
- 6 Metre and Memory (and <span xml:lang="ell">Μνημοσύνη</span>)
- 7 Tony Harrison’s Polygonal Ode to Delphi
- 8 Tony Harrison: Nigeria, Masque and Masks
- 9 The Early Years at the National Theatre: Harrison’s Molière and Racine
- 10 Harrison as Scholar-Poet of the Theatre
- 11 Verbal and Visual Witnessing: Tony Harrison’s Euripides
- 12 ‘<i>v</i>.’ Revisited: Harrison, Rimbaud and the French Radical Tradition
- 13 The Translation and Reception of Tony Harrison’s Poetry in France
- 14 Wine and Poetry: Translating Tony Harrison in Italy
- 15 A Poet behind the Camera
- 16 Modernism and the ‘Double Consciousness’ of Myth in Tony Harrison’s Poetry and <i>Metamorpheus</i>
- 17 The Only Tone for Terror: Tony Harrison and the Gorgon’s Gaze
- Afterword
- Consolidated Bibliography
- Index
Close Encounters of the Verse Kind: On Meeting Tony Harrison
Close Encounters of the Verse Kind: On Meeting Tony Harrison
- Chapter:
- (p.13) 2 Close Encounters of the Verse Kind: On Meeting Tony Harrison
- Source:
- New Light on Tony Harrison
- Author(s):
Simon Armitage
- Publisher:
- British Academy
In a personal and anecdotal chapter, Simon Armitage reflects on a number of encounters with the poetry of Tony Harrison and with Harrison himself. Armitage locates in Harrison's approach to writing a poetry that is "communicative, clear, local, but at the same time crafted, literary, and universal", a poetry at odds with and in defiance of the prevailing post-modern aesthetic of difficulty and obscurity. He celebrates Harrison's poetic autonomy which he associates with the poet's life outside academia, allowing Harrison see himself as a 'poet of the people', despite his scholarly intelligence and his life-long immersion in classical literature.
Keywords: Tony Harrison, Simon Armitage, Poetry, Autonomy, classical, personal
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- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Notes on Contributors
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Editor’s Introduction
- 1 Harrison as Elegist
- 2 Close Encounters of the Verse Kind: On Meeting Tony Harrison
- 3 The Man Who Came to Read the Metre
- 4 Lost in the Original: Tony Harrison as a Classicist Poet
- 5 Tony Harrison and the <i>Guardian</i>
- 6 Metre and Memory (and <span xml:lang="ell">Μνημοσύνη</span>)
- 7 Tony Harrison’s Polygonal Ode to Delphi
- 8 Tony Harrison: Nigeria, Masque and Masks
- 9 The Early Years at the National Theatre: Harrison’s Molière and Racine
- 10 Harrison as Scholar-Poet of the Theatre
- 11 Verbal and Visual Witnessing: Tony Harrison’s Euripides
- 12 ‘<i>v</i>.’ Revisited: Harrison, Rimbaud and the French Radical Tradition
- 13 The Translation and Reception of Tony Harrison’s Poetry in France
- 14 Wine and Poetry: Translating Tony Harrison in Italy
- 15 A Poet behind the Camera
- 16 Modernism and the ‘Double Consciousness’ of Myth in Tony Harrison’s Poetry and <i>Metamorpheus</i>
- 17 The Only Tone for Terror: Tony Harrison and the Gorgon’s Gaze
- Afterword
- Consolidated Bibliography
- Index
