From Baghdad to Sarajevo to Beeston: The War Poetry of Tony Harrison

Copley, H. 2018. From Baghdad to Sarajevo to Beeston: The War Poetry of Tony Harrison. English Studies. 99 (1), pp. 19-33. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2017.1405319

TitleFrom Baghdad to Sarajevo to Beeston: The War Poetry of Tony Harrison
TypeJournal article
AuthorsCopley, H.
Abstract

Much has been written about Tony Harrison’s representation of the social and political class “wars” that have shaped British society. However, this critical depiction ignores his occupation of other war zones. In his role as a correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer during the Gulf and Bosnian Wars for instance, Harrison produced poems that directly responded to international events, even travelling to sites of conflict to produce poetic dispatches from the front line. A new reading of these poems, combined with a consideration of the poet’s archived notebooks, prompts a critical re-examination of the poet’s position as an international war writer. By examining Harrison’s poetry and archived documentation a new image of the poet emerges—one that confirms his place as a war poet for the twentieth century and which sheds new light on the moral, formal and aesthetic considerations that characterise his front-line poetics.

KeywordsTony Harrison
war poetry
Bosnia
Iraq
international humanism
JournalEnglish Studies
Journal citation99 (1), pp. 19-33
ISSN0013-838X
1744-4217
Year2018
PublisherTaylor & Francis
Accepted author manuscript
File Access Level
Open (open metadata and files)
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2017.1405319
Web address (URL)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/0013838X.2017.1405319?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Publication dates
Published28 Jan 2018

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