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" I've always had the wish, the need, and the obsession to become a public poet. "
Tony Harrison
Need
Always
Become
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" I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry. "
Tony Harrison
Being Alone
Alone
Love
" I'm hoping to have a ninth decade like Matisse's. "
Tony Harrison
Hoping
Decade
Like
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Mask
Eyes
Poetry
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Life
King
Know
" I like a direct relationship between actor and audience. "
Tony Harrison
Audience
Like
Actor
" I'm not the sort of person who reads much about himself. "
Tony Harrison
Much
Who
Sort
" The imagination has its limits, and you have to face up to that. "
Tony Harrison
Face
You
Up
" I was brought up on music hall, and at the same time, I was studying Greek at the age of 12. "
Tony Harrison
Age
Up
Time
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Look
Move
Forward
" I really admire the great Japanese artists who could change their name three times in a lifetime. You could get rid of one and renew yourself. "
Tony Harrison
Yourself
Change
Great
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Emotions
Poetry
Out
" I hate everything about writing except doing it. "
Tony Harrison
Hate
Everything
Doing
" Coming from a very inarticulate family made me try to speak for those who can't express themselves and created a need for articulation at its most ceremonial - poetry. "
Tony Harrison
Speak
Try
Poetry
" The first thing you see in my hallway is a large 18th-century bust of Milton, who stares at me as I watch TV and reminds me of the grave and committed role of the poet. Although he was blind, Milton had one of the most unswerving gazes of all English poets. "
Tony Harrison
Me
See
Watch
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Children
Spiritual
Best
" Honours seem to be the nature of British life. It's horrible. Maybe I'm mad, but the older I get, the less I want to have honours loaded on me. "
Tony Harrison
Life
Horrible
Want
" I hate the anglicanisation of culture, the idea that culture is genteel. It's not genteel. "
Tony Harrison
Hate
Culture
Idea
" It's been an obsession with me from childhood, the horrors of the twentieth century. "
Tony Harrison
Childhood
Been
Century
" The ear will surrender even at those times when the eye wants to close, when the eye doesn't want to watch. "
Tony Harrison
Surrender
Watch
Want
" I often find myself quoting from Victor Hugo after one of my theatrical ventures. 'Now that my play is a failure,' he once said, 'I find I love it all the more.' I first quoted that after 'Square Rounds' at the Olivier in 1992. "
Tony Harrison
Find
Failure
Said
" Theatre has to be theatrical. It has to draw attention to itself, like poetry. "
Tony Harrison
Attention
Poetry
Theatre
" 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
Like
" I've realised darkness and light are inter-dependent, just as death is an enhancer of life. "
Tony Harrison
Just
Death
Life
" 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.' "
Tony Harrison
Try
Poetry
Point
" I believe more in the power of drama than in the power of religion. "
Tony Harrison
Believe
Drama
Power
" You litter poems with too much learning when you're younger. "
Tony Harrison
Much
Learning
Litter
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Art
You
Work
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Time
God
Thought
" 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. "
Tony Harrison
Fire
War
Light
" I think that, as you get older, you want to be freer rather than more bound. "
Tony Harrison
Rather
Want
You