Image: TONY HARRISON AT TEESSIDE UNIVERSITY (cropped)
Description: T Junction is Middlesbrough's annual International Poetry Festival running between the 14th. & 17th. April. Yesterday evening at the Teesside University Campus in Middlesbrough, Tony Harrison held his audience in close attention throughout a compelling reading. The relevance of his introductions bringing insight and a penetrating clarity to the expression of his poetry. I can't recall a many readings where there has been such an overt communion between poet and audience. Still active after a lifetime of writing, age seems to be no impediment to this wonderful poet, long may he thrive. The reach of themes portrayed covered the social schisms of education and early life, (of course)! poems triggered by wars old and recent and affectingly; the evocative poetry of deep memory and of origins. Tony Harrison's father was a believer something the son is not. A baker by trade he was as Tony tells it not especially articulate, a circumstance that was to fuel his own early ambition to escape that restriction. Job well done I'd say! MARKED WITH D. When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven not unlike those he'd fuelled all his life, I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven and radiant with the sight of his dead wife, light streaming from his mouth to shape her name, 'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie'. I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame but only literally, which makes me sorry, sorry for his sake there's no Heaven to reach. I get it all from Earth my daily bread but he hungered from release from mortal speech that kept him down, the tongue that weighed like lead. The baker's man that no one will see rise and England made to feel like some dull oaf is smoke, enough to sting one person's eyes and ash (not unlike flour) for one small loaf.
Tony Harrison 1937 –
Author: summonedbyfells
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