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V
'V' describes the author's visit to his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery "now littered with beer cans and vandalised by obscene graffiti". The cemetery in question is Holbeck cemetery in the Beeston area of Leeds which overlooks the Elland Road football ground, close to where Harrison grew up. The poem gives description of the graffiti on the grave, and pays particular notice to the use of the word united, exploring its ambiguous meaning, be it that of a football club or a feeling of unity. Incidentally the word 'united' is very rarely used in Leeds, when referring to Leeds United, the initials 'LUFC' are more commonly used."
Hardcover
First published November 1, 1985
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About the author
Tony Harrison
112 books37 followersSee http://www.contemporarywriters.com/au...
He has written for the National Theatre in London, the New York Metropolitan Opera and for the BBC and Channel 4 television. He was born in Leeds, England in 1937 and was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University, where he read Classics and took a diploma in Linguistics.
He became the first Northern Arts Literary Fellow (1967-8), a post that he held again in 1976-7, and he was resident dramatist at the National Theatre (1977-8). His work there included adaptations of Molière's The Misanthrope and Racine's Phaedra Britannica.
His first collection of poems, The Loiners (1970), was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1972, and his acclaimed version of Aeschylus's The Oresteia (1981) won him the first European Poetry Translation Prize in 1983. The The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) won the Whitbread Poetry Award.
His adaptation of the English Medieval Mystery Plays cycle was first performed at the National Theatre in 1985. Many of his plays have been 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 premiered 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, about vandalism, broadcast by Channel 4 television in 1987 and winner of a Royal Television Society Award; Black Daisies for the Bride, winner of the Prix Italia in 1994; 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 (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 collection of poetry is Under the Clock (2005), and his Collected Poems, and Collected Film Poetry, were published in 2007.
He has written for the National Theatre in London, the New York Metropolitan Opera and for the BBC and Channel 4 television. He was born in Leeds, England in 1937 and was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University, where he read Classics and took a diploma in Linguistics.
He became the first Northern Arts Literary Fellow (1967-8), a post that he held again in 1976-7, and he was resident dramatist at the National Theatre (1977-8). His work there included adaptations of Molière's The Misanthrope and Racine's Phaedra Britannica.
His first collection of poems, The Loiners (1970), was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1972, and his acclaimed version of Aeschylus's The Oresteia (1981) won him the first European Poetry Translation Prize in 1983. The The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) won the Whitbread Poetry Award.
His adaptation of the English Medieval Mystery Plays cycle was first performed at the National Theatre in 1985. Many of his plays have been 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 premiered 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, about vandalism, broadcast by Channel 4 television in 1987 and winner of a Royal Television Society Award; Black Daisies for the Bride, winner of the Prix Italia in 1994; 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 (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 collection of poetry is Under the Clock (2005), and his Collected Poems, and Collected Film Poetry, were published in 2007.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 26, 2023
V. seems to evolve each stanza; we are first made aware of the cultural Leeds's change and how even his father, who had lived there all his life, seemed to feel like a stranger in his hometown.
It then goes on to discuss the youth, & how they're ignorant of things, but this allows Tony Harrison to acknowledge the potential 'skin' within himself when he gets 'confronted' by one, which is himself.
It uses irony to acknowledge things like the 'UNION' sprayed on his parents' grave. It's ironic because it's something his parents never were in life & it's what his dad wanted. It's also ironic because the 'skin' inside Tony & Antony (from 'them and UZ' are reunited.
It then goes on to discuss the youth, & how they're ignorant of things, but this allows Tony Harrison to acknowledge the potential 'skin' within himself when he gets 'confronted' by one, which is himself.
It uses irony to acknowledge things like the 'UNION' sprayed on his parents' grave. It's ironic because it's something his parents never were in life & it's what his dad wanted. It's also ironic because the 'skin' inside Tony & Antony (from 'them and UZ' are reunited.
March 6, 2023
A very interesting piece of history. This poem gives us a lot of insight into the Miner's Strike of 1984-1985. The main talking points surrounding this poem (at the time) was that it relied very much on swearing, and there was conflict over whether it should be shown to the public in any capacity. I think the poem is a remarkable look into the class divides at the time and it is definitely a 'state of the nation' work. This is where the 'V' comes in, and we learn what purpose the symbol actually serves. It is said that is represents 'Victory' after WW2, but then goes on to represent 'Versus' as the nation essentially goes to war with itself. I struggled with the poetic form as I personally prefer prose works. After a few re-reads I understood what was going on, but I imagine a more attentive reader or someone better versed in poetry than me would have no issues.
My copy came with a multitude of newspaper articles in the back from the time of V's publishing. They were all very insightful, and it was fascinating to see the divide between readers. Some people loved it, believing it to have every right to be as vulgar as it was, and others detested it. Ironically, that could be seen as another 'V', even the readers were at war with each other. There is a lot more to say about this work and its historical and cultural impact, but I'm not an expert so I'll leave that to someone else.
My copy came with a multitude of newspaper articles in the back from the time of V's publishing. They were all very insightful, and it was fascinating to see the divide between readers. Some people loved it, believing it to have every right to be as vulgar as it was, and others detested it. Ironically, that could be seen as another 'V', even the readers were at war with each other. There is a lot more to say about this work and its historical and cultural impact, but I'm not an expert so I'll leave that to someone else.
January 16, 2009
Do not confuse this Tony Harrison with the pink shaman in The Mighty Boosh! Harrison is our top Northern poet who came to public attention after 'V's performance on Channel 4 – the furore from right wing newspapers and MPs over the 'FOUR LETTER TV POEM FURY' raised, ironically, the issue of language and power, which is what the poem is about. 'V' is a duologue between the poet/speaker Harrison and his alter-ego, a Skinhead who crudely articulates the resentment of the unemployed underclass during the time of the Miner's Strike (1984-5) Their lives have become as ''worked-out' as the coal pit beneath the dead of Leed's Beeston cemetery, a 'rabblement of bone and rot / shored slack, crushed shale, smashed prop.' Harrison, seeks to 'redeem' the 'versuses of life' the 'class v. class' tensions within fractured Thatcherite Britain. This also includes the contradictions between his own working class Northern background of Leeds and the middle classes he entered due to a Classical education articulated in the contrast between the poet/speaker's language of standard English and the Skin's Northern dialect. The disconnection between the poetic language of the fortunate Harrison and the disempowered Skinhead who never gets 'a hearing' is contextualised within the epigraph from Arthur Scargill that 'power' depends on an ability to 'master words'. The power of the poem comes from the Skinhead's direct vulgar assault on the poet/speaker for being a class traitor. Harrison's poem is in essence about guilt; how his Grammar and university education provided him with the privileged existence of a celebrated poet, but at a cost; a 'bard', barred from his working class lineage of his father's profession of 'butcher, publican and baker'. The poem cleverly combines higher and lower registers and the form alludes to Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' to lament this now 'blackened dynasty' of the Thatcher's degraded North.
March 31, 2012
The outrage over the film of this on Channel 4 in 1987 passed me by so this edition with the poem and the press clippings of the arguments for and against banning the TV program made fascinating reading. The poem itself is excellent and still very much relevant.
December 2, 2022
“I doubt if 30 years of bleak Leeds weather
and 30 falls of apple and of may
will erode the UNITED binding us together.
And now it's your decision: does it stay?”
May 6, 2021
This poem is insane. It’s literally beautiful. The language I can imagine is quite shocking but the effect is so realistic it is an honest representation of the emotion these people are feeling. The language is great and it reads so easily, I love Harrisons’ technique of writing in accents too, it makes poetry less pretentious which I am always a fan of.
February 27, 2025
Derby mentioned 🗣️
January 21, 2009
Having just watched the film "This Is England" the BNP and National Front were very much in my mind and this deliciously irreverent poem is poignant, inventive, and - although a little clicheed in places - a real thought-provoker. Carol Ann Duffy could learn a few things from Mr. Harrison.
February 19, 2018
V perfectly presents the struggles that many faced during the 1980s. Within the poem number of contemporary issues are faced, including unemployment, pit closures, the disintegration of small communities and the re-emergence of fascism. I found it incredibly thought provoking, and the style it was written in only added to this.
At the beginning of the poem it was all too easy to feel distaste and disgust for the skinheads who were spray painting (often racist) graffiti onto graves. However, Harrison gives one of these characters a voice, and the reader begins to develop understanding and sympathy for the struggle of his situation. In no way is his xenophobia, or anti-social behaviour, justifiable, as the speaker appears to have to come to terms with as he witnesses the yob graffiti on his own parents' grave. But Harrison is able to portray the struggles that came to characterise much of the 1980s, not only through youth's impassioned rant about the hopelessness he feels.
It is not only the class war and unemployment which Harrison readily confronts, but the rise of contemporary and materialistic society and culture, as well as post-war immigration. He remembers his father, and how he struggled with immigrants moving to the area and opening their own businesses where British business previously were, as well as what had been close knit, small communities breaking up as people moved away. In the graveyard where V begins, family plots are left empty by this internal migration, and the poet's father has to travel further for his food shopping, and is left feeling increasingly isolated by having people he used to have conversations with vanish.
All the issues raised in Tony Harrison's V were key factors in shaping modern society, and Harrison succeeds in combining them into an emotive analysis of the problems facing many who were being overlooked by society. The reader is given an insight into the lives of those who were being left behind as much of culture changed beyond recognition into what is now considered our contemporary society.
At the beginning of the poem it was all too easy to feel distaste and disgust for the skinheads who were spray painting (often racist) graffiti onto graves. However, Harrison gives one of these characters a voice, and the reader begins to develop understanding and sympathy for the struggle of his situation. In no way is his xenophobia, or anti-social behaviour, justifiable, as the speaker appears to have to come to terms with as he witnesses the yob graffiti on his own parents' grave. But Harrison is able to portray the struggles that came to characterise much of the 1980s, not only through youth's impassioned rant about the hopelessness he feels.
It is not only the class war and unemployment which Harrison readily confronts, but the rise of contemporary and materialistic society and culture, as well as post-war immigration. He remembers his father, and how he struggled with immigrants moving to the area and opening their own businesses where British business previously were, as well as what had been close knit, small communities breaking up as people moved away. In the graveyard where V begins, family plots are left empty by this internal migration, and the poet's father has to travel further for his food shopping, and is left feeling increasingly isolated by having people he used to have conversations with vanish.
All the issues raised in Tony Harrison's V were key factors in shaping modern society, and Harrison succeeds in combining them into an emotive analysis of the problems facing many who were being overlooked by society. The reader is given an insight into the lives of those who were being left behind as much of culture changed beyond recognition into what is now considered our contemporary society.
August 27, 2022
Tony Harrison is a Yorkshire poet with a diverse reach from poetry rooted in his Own background to medieval mystery plays. His terrific version of the Greek tragedy Oresteia is worth looking up on YouTube as is blasphemers banquet, his poetic protest against the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. His play the common chorus transposes the Ancient Greek play Lysistrata, in which women withhold sex to end a war , to the Greenham common women protesting in the Cold War and makes great comment on nuclear missions as phallic symbols of war.
Here in this long poem he writes in response to his parents grave being desecrated by drunk football fans . The V is the v of victory and versus , of age old division. He reflects that but for his work he might be the same, how society leaves people like this behind, on class and culture clashes , on not having better expressions of anger and frustration. The subject matter means it’s full of obscenities , which annoyed Mary Whitehouse, but in this case that’s the point .
Here in this long poem he writes in response to his parents grave being desecrated by drunk football fans . The V is the v of victory and versus , of age old division. He reflects that but for his work he might be the same, how society leaves people like this behind, on class and culture clashes , on not having better expressions of anger and frustration. The subject matter means it’s full of obscenities , which annoyed Mary Whitehouse, but in this case that’s the point .
February 7, 2018
4.5 stars!
It's very rare nowadays to find GOOD poetry that's current and relevant, and that doesn't censor itself to seem modest and canon-worthy. Tony Harrison has provided an exceptional commentary on human behaviour, channelling his anger over the vandalism of his parents' graves in a Leeds cemetery into an incredible poem. He's received so much negative criticism for it, simply because it contains expletives and language that you don't normally get in typical poetry. It's not flowery or euphemistic; it's real, and it's angry, and it's the terrifying truth, and that gritty, raw writing style is exactly what has just made me fall absolutely in love with Harrison's 'V.'
It's very rare nowadays to find GOOD poetry that's current and relevant, and that doesn't censor itself to seem modest and canon-worthy. Tony Harrison has provided an exceptional commentary on human behaviour, channelling his anger over the vandalism of his parents' graves in a Leeds cemetery into an incredible poem. He's received so much negative criticism for it, simply because it contains expletives and language that you don't normally get in typical poetry. It's not flowery or euphemistic; it's real, and it's angry, and it's the terrifying truth, and that gritty, raw writing style is exactly what has just made me fall absolutely in love with Harrison's 'V.'
October 25, 2018
The very ironic thing is, that I enjoyed this poem (very long poem) more after reading the reviews at the back of the book! Put in context, amid the controversy of this poem's 'foul language' and the censorship of it, I enjoyed it as a historical piece of work.
It's not clear if the poem is an imagined conversation, between Tony and some vandals with spray-cans, or if it actually happened in part, but the book interrogates class distinctions, and the nothingness of death. It suggested (to me) that graveyards are for the living, that the working class deserve their anger, and that Tony both pities and identifies with them.
It's not clear if the poem is an imagined conversation, between Tony and some vandals with spray-cans, or if it actually happened in part, but the book interrogates class distinctions, and the nothingness of death. It suggested (to me) that graveyards are for the living, that the working class deserve their anger, and that Tony both pities and identifies with them.
November 28, 2024
I enjoyed the poet’s reflection on how division is based, at least somewhat and sometimes, on feelings of class disenfranchisement, although that might be reflecting my own worldview slightly..!
The duality of the speaker and the later blurring of this duality is really effective - it was creative when the speaker adopted the language of the lower class character, reverting back to his youth. The insult “poet” is also “a crude four letter word” was brilliant too!
The duality of the speaker and the later blurring of this duality is really effective - it was creative when the speaker adopted the language of the lower class character, reverting back to his youth. The insult “poet” is also “a crude four letter word” was brilliant too!
July 22, 2020
Really enjoyed! nice perspective on class estrangement.
December 20, 2023
Read for my literature class but it hit deep. Will definitely be reading more Harrison
April 22, 2016
V ou Vs é um longo poema que respeita as métricas clássicas, sobre a decadência de Inglaterra. O autor pega num poema clássico inglês e faz uma crítica/paródia moderna (anos 80 de Margaret Tatcher neste caso), com menções a mineiros, sindicatos, hooligans e futebol (o poema nasce de hooligans terem vandalizado a pedra tumular dos pais do autor).
É como alguém se lembrasse de pegar nos Lusíadas e começasse a criticar a sociedade moderna, com os programas da TVI e o vício do Facebook à mistura. A ideia do clássico vs moderno, leitor vs autor, paixão vs ódio é engraçada, e a execução é de louvar, mas o poema não apaixona nem deixa frases marcantes para recordação.
É como alguém se lembrasse de pegar nos Lusíadas e começasse a criticar a sociedade moderna, com os programas da TVI e o vício do Facebook à mistura. A ideia do clássico vs moderno, leitor vs autor, paixão vs ódio é engraçada, e a execução é de louvar, mas o poema não apaixona nem deixa frases marcantes para recordação.
April 3, 2022
7/10
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
To find my slab behind the family dead,
Butcher, publican and, baker now me bard
Adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
V - Tony Harrison
V is a long poem written by Tony Harrison in which he travels to the graveyard where his parents are buried and finds graffiti over everything. The character struggles with dilemmas of class and doesn't truly know where he belongs in the world. It is definitely an interesting read and i got a lot from my university classes from it, though the language is foul so not for the faint hearted 😜😳
Next millennium you'll have to search quite hard
To find my slab behind the family dead,
Butcher, publican and, baker now me bard
Adding poetry to their beef, beer and bread.
V - Tony Harrison
V is a long poem written by Tony Harrison in which he travels to the graveyard where his parents are buried and finds graffiti over everything. The character struggles with dilemmas of class and doesn't truly know where he belongs in the world. It is definitely an interesting read and i got a lot from my university classes from it, though the language is foul so not for the faint hearted 😜😳
August 9, 2010
Two long poems in this collection are faves: V with its graffitied family tombstone & musings about parents and prospects; and the pomegranates of patmos, a slap at the creepy delusional death wish of the book of revelations on behalf of the pleasures of living.
August 6, 2011
By heck the tongue is filthy! However, it is all for an intellectual purpose though therefore fully justified.
September 11, 2012
a great poem, a really, really great poem.
April 30, 2013
I enjoyed the bad language and quite understood the message and subject of it.
February 27, 2014
just a little overblown for me, but heard aloud it is quite something
July 12, 2015
I don't fully understand the context behind it but I soon will.
I liked the irony and anger felt throughout the poem towards the ignorant.
Emotive and effective.
I liked the irony and anger felt throughout the poem towards the ignorant.
Emotive and effective.
March 16, 2023
Provocative, self-aware and incredibly funny
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February 28, 2018Leeds Leeds Leeds
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews