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" I think poems belong as much in the news pages as the literary pages. A lot of people throw aside the literary pages! Whereas everybody looks at the news section. "

Tony Harrison

News

People

Think

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" I think that, as you get older, you want to be freer rather than more bound. "

" There's a kind of despair about whether art can really do anything, but you have to incorporate that despair into the way you work. I try to soak my work in my sense of futility and fury. "

" Of course you have to provide for the vulnerable and the children, but also, the vulnerable and the children need art in some form or another. You need spiritual experiences that, I think, forms of art give best. "

" The imagination has its limits, and you have to face up to that. "

Tony Harrison

Face

You

" For me, there is a paradox in poetry, which is like the paradox in tragedy. You have the most terrible subject, but it's in a form that is so sensually gratifying that it connects the surviving heart to the despairing intellect. "

Tony Harrison

Poetry

Heart

" It's been an obsession with me from childhood, the horrors of the twentieth century. "

" One of the important things about familiar form and metricality is that it draws attention to the physical nature of language: the spell-binding nature of it and the ceremony of articulation. "

" I was brought up on music hall, and at the same time, I was studying Greek at the age of 12. "

Tony Harrison

Age

Time

" The Greek tragic mask is one of my main metaphors for the role of the poet. The eyes of the tragic mask are always open to witness even the worst, and the mouth is always open to make poetry from it. Neither ever close. "

" I've always had the wish, the need, and the obsession to become a public poet. "

" I think it's the tendency to want to create gods and monotheistic absolutes and absolute certainties that is the continual temptation in human thought - that's the great danger. Every time we create a god, we diminish humanity. "

" I believe more in the power of drama than in the power of religion. "

" I was well read and knew languages, but I didn't want to become Ezra Pound. I wanted to write poetry that people like my parents might respond to. "

" I hate the anglicanisation of culture, the idea that culture is genteel. It's not genteel. "

" I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry. "

" Why shouldn't poetry address what happened yesterday and be published in the newspaper? "

" You get early inoculation against the idea of success if you're a poet. When I published my first collection of sonnets, I sold about five copies; now kids study them for A level. Wanting to be successful in that other world of money or fame is not interesting. Poetry isn't like that, and it never has been. "

" I spent a lot of time on recce. It is a kind of creative chaos, but I like the sense of creative serendipity. "

" Looking back, fire images have been constant in my poetry. As a boy, it was my job to light the fire each morning, and I remember the celebratory bonfires at the end of the war. It was from staring into fire that I began my first poetry. "

" It is always better to write for the whole of society than for the poetry-reading public. "

" A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who wouldn't allow me to read poetry aloud. "

Tony Harrison

Poetry

Writing

" You can make poems out of anger as well as tenderness. You can make poetry out of anything. It can be the ugliest of emotions. It doesn't have to be sweetness and light. "

" I've written on public matters, but I don't understand how anyone could tout me as a possible poet laureate when I wrote a poem on the abdication of King Charles III or about the sex life of the Royals... anybody who knew my work would know I'm not a contender. "

" I hate being called poet/dramatist/translator/director. 'Poet' covers it all for me. "

Tony Harrison

Covers

Hate

" Statues are one of the ways I try to test the traditions of European culture against the most modern destructive forces. I often make a point of seeking them out and have used them as mouthpieces in my film poetry, as with Heinrich Heine in 'The Gaze of the Gorgon.' "

" Theatre has to be theatrical. It has to draw attention to itself, like poetry. "

" I'm not the sort of person who reads much about himself. "

" I am capable of bad taste - deliberately. "

Tony Harrison

Bad

Bad Taste

" I need to look back on my poetic ventures, make sense of them as a whole, and move forward... and to experiment without external demands. "

" I have always loved radio as a medium. "