Tony Harrison (1937-2025)
We are immensely saddened by news of the death of Tony Harrison, aged 88, who had been unwell for some years.
Tony Harrison was Britain's leading film and theatre poet. He wrote for the National Theatre in London, the New York Metropolitan Opera and for the BBC and Channel 4 television. Born in 1937 in Beeston, Leeds, the son of a bakery worker, he was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University, where he read Classics and took a diploma in Linguistics.
From 1962 to 1966 he lectured in English at the new Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, northern Nigeria. There he began working on the poems which would later appear in his first collection, and co-wrote Aikin Mata with Irish poet James Simmons, their version of Aristophanes' play Lysistrata – translated it from 5th-century Athens to Africa – which was staged in Zaria in 1964 and published by OUP in Africa in 1966. From Nigeria he moved – with wife Rosemarie and young daughter Jane – to Czechoslovakia, where he spent a year teaching at Charles University in Prague, learning the language and becoming immersed in Czech theatre during liberalised period preceding the Soviet invasion.
In 1967 he headed back to England, becoming the first Northern Arts Literary Fellow (1967-68), a post he held again, in 1976-77, the move resulting in him living permanently in Newcastle, apart from periods in New York and Florida in the early 1980s. He was resident dramatist at the National Theatre in 1977-78, his work there including adaptations of Molière's The Misanthrope and Racine's Phaedra Britannica, both published by Rex Collings (1973 and 1975).
His first collection of poems, The Loiners (London Magazine Editions, 1970), was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1972. This was followed by Palladas: Poems, his versions of the 4th-century Alexandrian poet (Anvil Press Poetry, 1975), and by two editions of his continuing sequence of Meredithian sonnets, The School fo Eloquence, published by Rex Collings, From 'The School of Eloquence' and Other Poems (1978) and Continuous: 50 Sonnets from 'The School of Eloquence' (1981). His acclaimed version of Aeschylus's The Oresteia (Rex Collings, 1981) won him the first European Poetry Translation Prize in 1983. Penguin published his Selected Poems in 1984. Bloodaxe published his Dramatic Verse 1973-1985 in hardback in 1985, with a paperback following from Penguin under the title Theatre Works 1973-1985.
'Tony Harrison's achievement springs from apparent contradiction,' wrote Sean O'Brien, 'he is a classicist from the working class; a writer of considerable scholarship seeking a mass audience in the theatre and on television; a poet of great technical accomplishment whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence; a pessimist with a relish for life; above all, perhaps, a poet repeatedly troubled by the knowledge that that the very gift that enables him to speak for his class is what separates him from it.' [Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English]
Tony Harrison published eight titles with Bloodaxe from 1981 to 1995: A Kumquat for John Keats (1981), U.S. Martial (1981), v. (1985/1989), The Fire-Gap (1985), Dramatic Verse 1973-1985 (1985), A Cold Coming (1991), The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) and Permanently Bard: Selected Poetry (1995). The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) won the Whitbread Poetry Award. In addition, Neil Astley's critical anthology Tony Harrison (1991) included several essays and texts collected or published there for the first time, including his long poem The Mother of the Muses and the television poems Arctic Paradise and The Blasphemers' Banquet.
Harrison's adaptation of the English Medieval Mystery Plays cycle was first performed at the National Theatre in 1985 as The Mysteries. Many of his plays were staged away from conventional auditoria: The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus was premièred at the ancient stadium at Delphi in 1988; Poetry or Bust was first performed at Salts Mill, Saltaire in Yorkshire in 1993; The Kaisers of Carnuntum premièred at the ancient Roman amphitheatre at Carnuntum in Austria; and The Labours of Herakles was performed on the site of the new theatre at Delphi in Greece in 1995. His translation of Victor Hugo's The Prince's Play was performed at the National Theatre in 1996.
His films using verse narrative include v., broadcast by Channel 4 television in 1987 in a film directed by Richard Eyre which won a Royal Television Society Award. The controversy around the broadcast led to v. becoming his best-known work. He wrote v. during the bitter Miners' Strike of 1984-85 when he visited his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery and found it vandalised by obscene graffiti. In the book-length poem, he confronts the foul-mouthed skinhead thug responsible, who becomes a foil for his own anger and alienation. It was first published in 1985 in the London Review of Books followed by book publication by Bloodaxe, achieving national renown when tabloids and politicians were outraged because of so-called "offensive" language being used on national television. Bloodaxe's second edition of v. includes press articles, letters, reviews, a defence of the poem and film by Richard Eyre, and a transcript of the phone calls logged by Channel Four on the night of the broadcast.
His other television work from this period included Black Daisies for the Bride, winner of the Prix Italia in 1994, about Alzheimer's disease (from which he was later to suffer himself); and The Blasphemers' Banquet, screened by the BBC in 1989, an attack on censorship inspired by the Salman Rushdie affair. He co-directed A Maybe Day in Kazakhstan for Channel 4 in 1994 and directed, wrote and narrated The Shadow of Hiroshima, screened by Channel 4 in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atom bomb. The published text, The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other Film/Poems (Faber, 1995), won the Heinemann Award in 1996. He wrote and directed his first feature film Prometheus in 1998. In 1995 he was commissioned by The Guardian newspaper to visit Bosnia and write poems about the war.
His most recent poetry collection was Under the Clock (Penguin, 2005), which was followed by Collected Poems (Viking, 2007) and Collected Film Poetry (Faber, 2007). Fram (Faber, 2008), a work for theatre, was premièred at the National Theatre in 2007. He received the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2015.
Tony Harrison was married twice, to Rosemarie Crossfield and to opera singer Teresa Stratas, and leaves his later life partner, actress Sian Thomas, and two children by his first marriage, daughter Jane and son Max.
Tony Harrison: born Beeston, Leeds, 30 April 1937, died Newcastle upon Tyne, 26 September 2025.
Tributes published include the following:
The Times, 27 September 2025: Tony Harrison obituary: acclaimed Yorkshire poet and playwright
The Guardian, 27 September 2025: Tony Harrison, poet and dramatist, dies aged 88 by Alison Flood
The Guardian, 28 September 2025: Tony Harrison obituary by Claire Armitstead
London Review of Books, 29 September 2025: Tony Harrison 1937-2025 by the Editors
The Journal (Newcastle), Thursday 2 October 2025: Tributes to man who put poetry on the front page. In print only. The piece quotes from former Journal arts editor David Whetstone’s tribute in Cultured. North East, linked to above.
BBC Yorkshire, 29 September 2025: Tributes paid to poet and playwright Tony Harrison
The Observer, in print Sunday 28 December 2025: 'Tony Harrison was remembered by Simon Armitage'
Morning Star, Thursday 9 October 2025
In an opinion piece in the Morning Star of 9 October 2025, John Newsham recommends re-reading Tony Harrison’s poem v. for its relevance to 2025. The online edition includes a video of Richard Eyre’s film of v. which was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987.
‘Ultimately, this poem asks the reader to leave its most difficult questions unanswered. But those questions: of who we are, as a nation, of how we account for our divisions and the worst of our collective selves, are every bit as relevant today.’ – John Newsham, Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/verses-versus
BBC RADIO 4 REBROADCAST OF FEATURE ON TONY HARRISON’S V.
v. by Tony Harrison, BBC Radio 4, first broadcast Monday 18 February 2013, 11pm, rebroadcast Thursday 6 November 2025, 11pm
In tribute to the late Tony Harrison, BBC Radio 4 rebroadcast v. by Tony Harrison, which was first broadcast in February 2013. This featured a new recording of Tony Harrison, then aged 75, reading his book-length poem v. and was the first broadcast of the poem on British radio. In the first half of the programme, the writer Blake Morrison introduced v. and talked to others who were caught up in the storm that surrounded Channel 4's film of the poem.
‘The poet Tony Harrison (1937-2025) recorded this complete reading of his controversial poem v. in 2013 and it is repeated to mark his death in September 2025. It is broadcast in this programme alongside a discussion around the poem's significance, also from 2013. This was the first broadcast of v. on British radio. It was recorded in his hometown of Leeds.
Harrison wrote the poem in 1985, after being angered by graffiti sprayed on his parents' grave by football fans. The writer Blake Morrison introduces us to v. and talks to others who were caught up in the storm of controversy around it. Melvyn Bragg, Simon Armitage and Julie Bindell, as well as then-MP Gerald Howarth, consider its impact.
A filmed version of the poem caused controversy in 1987 when it was announced that it was to be broadcast on Channel 4. The poem, which includes repeated strong and racist language, was denounced by some newspapers as a "torrent of filth". A group of MPs signed an Early Day Motion to have the programme pulled from schedules. At that time, Gerald Howarth said that Harrison was "Probably another bolshie poet wishing to impose his frustrations on the rest of us". Harrison retorted that Howarth was "Probably another idiot MP wishing to impose his intellectual limitations on the rest of us". Others defended the poet's right to use such language to draw attention to the wanton desecration of his family's grave. It was also seen against the backdrop of the miners' strike and racial intolerance in British cities. Beeston, the poem's setting, was later under focus as the home of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the 7/7 bombers.’
Rebroadcast 6 November 2025. Available on BBC Sounds. Tony Harrison’s reading of v. is introduced at 27:40. This is the recording used on Bloodaxe's e-book with audio edition of v.
BBC RADIO 4 TRIBUTE TO TONY HARRISON
The Verb, BBC Radio 4, Sunday 19 October 2025, 5.10pm
Ian McMillan began this edition of The Verb with a tribute to fellow Yorkshire poet Tony Harrison.
'A peerless poet for film and theatre. A working class boy from Leeds who became a scholar of the classics, an interrogator of class and what it does to us. A virtuoso of the hear and the heartbeat.' – Ian McMillan, paying tribute to Tony Harrison on The Verb
‘Ian McMillan celebrates an iconic poem that inspired a generation of poets and readers - Tony Harrison's 'Them and Uz'. His guests include the new US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, the former Poet Laureate of Belfast Sinéad Morrissey who brings us an autumnal 'Neon Line', zoologist and poet David Morley on his new book Passion, and Daniel Sluman on a landmark anthology Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets’
The programme will be available on BBC Sounds until Tuesday 18 November 2025, 4.54pm. The programme began with a tribute to Tony Harrison.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002l236
BBC RADIO 4 TRIBUTE
Last Word, BBC Radio 4, Friday 3 October 2025, 4pm (repeated Sunday 5 October, 8.30pm)
Poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen paid tribute to Tony Harrison on BBC Radio 4's obituaries programme Last Word. Archive recordings of Tony Harrison reading from and speaking about his work were played.
‘Tony Harrison, the Yorkshire born poet who took his writing to new audiences through theatre and TV. Michael Rosen assesses his work.’
Tony Harrison tribute from 7:52. V. was discussed from 12.15. The programme will remain available on BBC Sounds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002k4pt
SCOTTISH POETRY LIBRARY TRIBUTE PODCAST
Scottish Poetry Library, Tony Harrison in Conversation at Edinburgh Filmhouse in 2018, podcast online October 2025
As a tribute to Tony Harrison, the Scottish Poetry Library has created a brand new podcast from a previously-unheard audio recording of Tony speaking in Edinburgh. On 19 November 2018, Tony Harrison took part in a special event at Edinburgh Filmhouse. It was a rare public appearance from Harrison which consisted of a conversation with his friend and collaborator Peter Symes, intercut with screenings of Harrison’s film poems.
Listen to the full conversation via the SPL podcast here.
Events commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first publication of v. in London Review of Books took place 11-13 October 2025 at Durham Book Festival, Ilkley Literature Festival and Manchester Literature Festival. Three readings of v. were held in Holbeck near Leeds on Sunday 12 October, two outdoors in Holbeck Cemetery.
Forty years on, Durham Book Festival and poet Andrew McMillan brought together three acclaimed Northern poets, Malika Booker, Jo Clement and Paul Farley, to re-imagine this seminal piece of public poetry and read from their newly commissioned poems. The three Reimagining v. events took place at Durham Book Festival, Ilkley Literature Festival and Manchester Literature Festival, 11-13 October 2025.
V. A Homecoming, Sunday 12th October 2025, outdoors 12 noon & 2.30pm at Holbeck Cemetery, and indoors at The Warehouse Holbeck at 5pm
To mark the 40th anniversary of its first publication in their pages, the London Review of Books approached Slung Low, with Tony Harrison’s encouragement, about bringing the poem home to Holbeck Cemetery for a live reading. After discussion with Harrison’s family and longstanding collaborators, some of whom are involved in this project, the event will continue as planned, as a unique and fitting celebration of Harrison’s most famous work.
A cast of five from Slung Low theatre company performed the poem in full in Holbeck Cemetery, to audiences listening to the reading through headphones, immersed in the environment in which the poem is set. A third reading took place indoors at The Warehouse in Holbeck, followed by a discussion about Tony Harrison’s work with special guests including Professor Edith Hall, one of the leading authorities on Tony Harrison’s work. Audio of the production has been posted on the page below.
https://www.slunglow.org/v-a-homecoming/
These events are mentioned in London Review of Books’ tribute of 29 September 2025.
A piece in The Guardian of 29 September 2025 also featured the upcoming V. A Homecoming events:
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/sep/29/tony-harrison-poem-v-performed-in-leeds-cemetery
Tony Harrison's book-length poem v. was first published by Bloodaxe Books in 1985. It was republished by Bloodaxe in 1989 in an edition including press articles which followed the broadcast of a film of the poem by Richard Eyre on Channel 4.
The ebook with audio uses a 2012 recording of Tony Harrison reading v. made by Whistledown Productions and first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 16 February 2013. The BBC rebroadcast this on 6 November 2025 in tribute to Tony Harrison.
Tony Harrison's v. was written during the Miners' Strike of 1984-85 when he visited his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery and found it vandalised by obscene graffiti. In the book-length poem, he confronts the foul-mouthed skinhead thug responsible, who becomes a foil for his own anger and alienation. The political and media reaction to v. would make a book in itself. This is that book. As well as Tony Harrison's poem and Graham Sykes's photographs, this new edition of v. includes press articles, letters, reviews, a defence of the poem and film by director Richard Eyre, and a transcript of the phone calls logged by Channel 4 on the night of the broadcast.
Channel Four’s film of v. won the Royal Television Society’s Best Original Programme Award.
BBC Culture, ‘Tony Harrison's v: Why a poem outraged 1980s Britain’, online 6 March 2025
A feature about Tony Harrison’s controversial 1985 book-length poem v. went online on BBC Culture on 6 March 2025 to mark the 40th anniversary of the poem's first publication in London Review of Books. Neil Armstrong spoke to Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley in connection with this piece.
'...if you read the poem today, it feels every bit as vital and relevant as it was 40 years ago.' – Neil Astley, on v.
‘Forty years ago, Northern English poet Harrison published a powerful work inspired by vandalised gravestones in his hometown Leeds. Then, when it was screened on TV in 1987, a national furore erupted.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20250305-tony-harrisons-v-why-a-poem-outraged-1980s-britain
Radio features still available on BBC Sounds:
Sunday Feature: Tony Harrison's Prague Spring, BBC Radio 3, Sunday 8 July 2018, 6.45pm (repeated Thursday 8 Aug 2019, 10pm)
In 2018, Tony Harrison travelled to Prague with his son-in-law Chris Bowlby to make this BBC Radio 3 Sunday Feature about his formative time in Prague in the 1960s.
‘Chris Bowlby travels with Tony Harrison to Prague, to discover how one of Britain's best known poets was shaped by the cultural energy and tragedy of 1960s Czechoslovakia. Harrison reads from his Prague poems in the locations where they were written. And he relives with Czech friends stories of cafes and cartoons, sex and surveillance and the hope and despair of a people fighting Soviet tanks and secret police with words, plays and tragic self-sacrifice.’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b91r0z
BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Feature marked Tony Harrison’s 80th birthday with a 45-minute profile. Tony Harrison took Paul Farley on a tour of some of his significant places, including the cemetery in Leeds where his 'raw and urgent' long poem v. is set. They discussed the poem and the controversy that followed the broadcast of Richard Eyre's Channel Four film version of v. in 1987. With contributions from Richard Eyre. Tony Harrison also read an extract from the poem.
‘Poetry sometimes has astonishing public moments and points of ignition: this was one of them.’ – Paul Farley’s response to watching the film of v.
'To mark Tony Harrison's 80th birthday, Paul Farley presents a profile of this unique poet, playwright and filmmaker - author of the controversial long poem v. and game-changing theatre productions of The Mysteries, The Oresteia and The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, among many others.'
Click here to listen and to view photos in the gallery. The poem v. is discussed from 26.11
Bookclub: Tony Harrison's v., BBC Radio 4, Sunday 5 June 2016, 4pm
James Naughtie and a group of readers talked to Tony Harrison about his controversial poem v. on Radio 4's Bookclub on 5 June 2016. The programme was recorded at the Hexham Book Festival on 29 April 2016.
‘Harrison wrote the poem in 1985, after being angered by graffiti sprayed on his par-ents' grave by football fans in his home town of Leeds. A filmed version of the poem, directed by Richard Eyre, caused controversy two years later when it was announced that it was to be broadcast on Channel 4. The poem, which includes repeated strong language was denounced by tabloid news-papers as a "torrent of filth". A group of Conservative MPs signed an early day mo-tion to have the programme pulled from the schedules. Others defended the poet's right to use such language to draw attention to the wanton desecration of his family's grave. It was also seen against the backdrop of the Miners' strike and racial intolerance in British cities.’
Click here to listen to the programme
Click here to listen to a short clip: "We'll occupy your lousy leasehold poetry!"
[27 September 2025]
