Why do I Like Tony Harrison so much? by Chloe Garner

Perhaps it is because he was one of the first poets I ever heard, at an event at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. He was reading from Laureate’s Block, the hall was packed and he was extremely charismatic. After the reading I came home and read the book again cover to cover. And read it again the next morning before going to work. I found poems that are sensual and vivid. And I still can’t visit Northumberland without recalling one of my favourite of his lines, “Farne cormorants with catches in their beaks/ Shower fishscale confetti on a shining sea.” The controversy that surrounded his uncompromising rejection, in verse, in The Guardian of any possibility that he would ever accept the position of poet laureate, coincided with a time when it seemed there was a real possibility that the monarchy would somehow implode! Not long after a friend read V. to me and that was an eye-opening occasion. It knocked my socks off. I have since seen The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, at the National Theatre and found it incredibly moving and heartbreaking. To me he is simply a great poet, who writes with great passion and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to hear him again.

Tony Harrison appearing at Ledbury on 2 June in his 75th year!