How does Tony Harrison explore the theme of place?
In Tony Harrison’s extensive array of poetry, links can often be highlighted between poems whether it be based on the theme, structure or language of the poems. One such example is the importance of the theme of place within many of Harrison’s poems. ‘V.’, ‘Allotments’ and ‘Flying Down to Rio’ are three of the poems in which this theme is explored in detail.
'V.' is one of Harrison's best known works due to its mass publicity. In it Harrison visits his family burial plot (in the Beeston, an area of Leeds), and speaks about the day his name will be searched for on there. Immediately Harrison has set out the image in readers minds of his homeland, this makes the poem seem more personal to him which is common in his poems. He describes the sights from on top of the hill, the landscape, the city centre and his old school, and the fact that the stones are toppling due to subsidence from the pits below. Such small details are crucial to Harrison’s style, he gets across his northern passion in vivid descriptions of locations and how even the tiniest of details can bring about emotions. He also speaks of the prominence of the graffiti on the graves, the power of this image doesn’t lie within the fact that some of the graffiti is obscene but rather the fact that some ‘skins’ have done the graffiti in a place which is so sacred and valuable to Harrison himself. The poem also takes a view of politics on Britain as a country and is mainly against the upper classes. The skinhead in the poem can be read as being a different Tony Harrison, how Harrison could have turned out had he not gone to Grammar school and University. This is further shown by Harrison provoking him into signing his name on his 'work', and the names are the same. The fact that just the mere place they were brought up in could have had such contrasting outcomes shows how much weight; ‘place’ carries in Harrison’s poem.
