Selected Poems

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A revised edition of Tony Harrison's award-winning Selected Poems

This indispensable new selection of Tony Harrison's poems includes over sixty poems from his famous sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence and the remarkable long poem 'v.', a meditation in a vandalized Leeds graveyard which caused enormous controversy when it was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and is now regarded as one of the key poems of the late twentieth century.

This substantially revised and updated edition now also features a generous selection of Harrison's most recent work, including the acclaimed poems he wrote for the Guardian on the Gulf War and then from the front line in the Bosnian War which won him the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry in 2007.

Selected Poems is a collection to be savoured by fans of Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage and Sophie Hannah.

'A voracious appetite for language. Brilliant, passionate, outrageous, abrasive, but also, as in the family sonnets, immeasurably tender' Harold Pinter

'In the front rank of contemporary British poets. Harrison's range is exhilarating, his clarity and technical mastery a sharp pleasure' Melvyn Bragg

'The poem "v." is the most outstanding social poem of the last twenty-five years. Seldom has a British poem of such personal intensity had such universal range' Martin Booth

'Poems written in a style which I feel I have all my life been waiting for' Stephen Spender

'A poet of great technical accomplishment whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence' Sean O'Brien, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

At last Americans may read one of England's foremost contemporary poets. Harrison's work derives its power from the conflict between his working class roots and classical education. His style is distinguished by a penchant for rhyme that at its best is dazzling but at time merely facile. His early work features globe-trotting travelog and flamboyant satyriasis; his in-progress sonnet-cycle, ``From the School of Eloquence,'' is more substantial. In it he pays tribute to English working class history and his own upbringing, producing several elegiac pieces for his mother and father that form the most mature, serious, and persuasive segment of his work: ``I believe life ends with death, and that is all./ You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,/ in my new black leather phone book there's your name/ and the disconnected number I still call.'' Highly recommended. Frank J. Lepkowski, Oakland Univ., Rochester, Mich. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.