The Poetry of Tony Harrison

"If art can't cope, it's just another form of dope."

The poetry of Tony Harrison, passionate yet highly disciplined, has its roots in his Northern working-class background. A scholarship boy from Leeds Grammar School, he went on to study at the city's university and his poetry engages fiercely with the issues and contradictions that arise from his upbringing and education. A radical and a political poet, he works within conventional verse forms to produce poems of a personal and public kind that challenge established thought in a way that distinguishes him from his contemporaries.

In this book, Sean Sheehan discusses Tony Harrison's poetry from his early work in the 1970s through to poems on the legacy of the two Gulf Wars, and his status as Britain's greatest living poet is affirmed.

About the author:

Sean Sheehan lives in the southwest of Ireland. He taught English for a number of years but he is now a full-time writer. His most recent book is Jack's World (Cork University Press) and he is also the author of Gerard Manley Hopkins for the Greenwich Exchange Student Guide Literary Series.

56  pages

ISBN: 978-1-906075-15-6