Tony Harrison writes poetry and drama about class, education, language, family and the political uses of culture. The School of Eloquence sequence examines his Leeds working-class background and the distance created by education, repeatedly returning to accent, parental speech and who is allowed to sound authoritative in literary spaces. V. begins in a vandalised cemetery and expands into an argument about unemployment, football culture, division and the poet's own relationship to anger and privilege. Harrison's versions of Greek drama, including work based on Aeschylus and Euripides, bring classical structures into contemporary political language. His verse is formal, forceful and often rhymed, using metre as a way to contain argument rather than soften it. His work fits post-war British poetry, class writing and political verse, especially for readers interested in how traditional forms can carry confrontational modern speech. Read more Less
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