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" 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. "

Tony Harrison

Language

Important

Nature

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

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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

" 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

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

" 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. "

" You litter poems with too much learning when you're younger. "

" I am capable of bad taste - deliberately. "

Tony Harrison

Bad

Bad Taste

" The ear will surrender even at those times when the eye wants to close, when the eye doesn't want to watch. "

" 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 hate everything about writing except doing it. "

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

Tony Harrison

Covers

Hate

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

" 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 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Yes, I've got inwardness and tenderness, but I also get angry and vituperative, and you have to honour that as well. "

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

Tony Harrison

Face

You

" I wanted to learn Latin and Greek and become a poet and acquire power over language. I only understand this clearly in retrospect, that my ability to study came from a hunger to learn all the resources of articulation. "

" I like a direct relationship between actor and audience. "

Tony Harrison

Audience

Actor

" 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

" 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.' "

" 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. "