IST English Department
A1 IB Study Guide - Tony Harrison
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.
____________
...the tongue that once I used
to know
but can't bone up on now, and that's mi mam's
(from Wordlists II)
__________________
So right, yer buggers, then! We'll
occupy
your lousy leasehold Poetry.
(from Them & [uz])
________________
Harrison identifies his two uncles, one dumb, one
a stammerer, as his influences. Throughout his work he show that poetry is not
the cultural property of the elite and he expresses anger at the ways in which
this myth has been perpetuated. He understands the power of cultural elitism and
the ways in which his education (Grammar school then Oxford university) cut him
off from his working class roots.
The importance of his family background is
evident in Harrison's poetry. There's uncle Joe, who compensated for his stammer
by hand-setting printer's type faster than he could talk, Uncle Harry, stabbing
the dictionary for words, his Grandfathers: a fell farmer, a publican and a
railway signalman, his Dad, a baker, and his Mam. His ancestry is central to his
identity as a poet. coming from a background where there were no books, and
living amongst people who felt themselves to be inarticulate (although his poems
are a testament to the paradoxical eloquence of these "inarticulates")
Harrison was, "voraciously obsessive about acquiring language and power
over language".
Harrison's obsession for language is manifested
in the way he plays with words. He creates new words, "littererchewer",
(Them & [uz]) and combines old words into new compounds, "Cissy-bleeding-ro"
(Me Tarzan). The point is never to mysitfy or exlude. Harrison never claims an
"elevated" or "restriced" or "appropriate"
language for poetry, he claims all language for poetry. Harrison puts a Leeds
dialect word next to a Latinate word Milton would have used, he harnesses formal
language to the language that kicks around the streets. Through his poetry he
attempts to empower the disempowered. His tone is energetic, aggressive and at
times tender and regretful. Paradoxically his championing of those excluded from
"Literature" is framed in a very literary form.
have a look at the British
Council resource
