Selected Poems - Softcover

Tony Harrison

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140105638 ISBN 13: 9780140105636

Publisher: Penguin, 1987

Synopsis

This generous selection of Tony Harrison's poems includes sixty-three poems from his famous sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence and the remarkable long poem 'v.', a meditation in a vandalized Leeds graveyard, written during the miners' strike, which created such a stir when it was broadcast on television in the late 1980s.

About this title

From the Back Cover

This indispensable new selection of Tony Harrison's poems includes over sixty poems from his famous sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence and the remarkable long poem 'v.', a meditation in a vandalized Leeds graveyard which caused enormous controversy when it was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and is now regarded as one of the key poems of the late twentieth century.

This substantially revised and updated edition now also features a generous selection of Harrison's most recent work, including the acclaimed poems he wrote for the Guardian on the Gulf War and then from the front line in the Bosnian War which won him the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry in 2007.

'A voracious appetite for language. Brilliant, passionate, outrageous, abrasive, but also, as in the family sonnets, immeasurably tender' Harold Pinter

'In the front rank of contemporary British poets. Harrison's range is exhilarating, his clarity and technical mastery a sharp pleasure' Melvyn Bragg

'The poem "v." is the most outstanding social poem of the last twenty-five years. Seldom has a British poem of such personal intensity had such universal range' Martin Booth

'Poems written in a style which I feel I have all my life been waiting for' Stephen Spender

'A poet of great technical accomplishment whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence' Sean O'Brien, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry

About the Author

Tony Harrison was born in Leeds in 1937 and now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. His collections of poetry include The Loiners, Continuous, v, A Cold Coming, Laureate's Block and most recently Under the Clock - published as a Pocket Penguin for Penguin's 70th birthday in May 2005. Recognized as Britain's leading theatre and film poet, Harrison has written extensively for the National Theatre, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the BBC and Channel 4. He is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Royal Television Society Award, the European Poetry Translation Prize and the Prix Italia.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140105638
• ISBN 13: 9780140105636
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 256