I've written on public matters, but I don't understand how anyone could tout me as a possible poet laureate when I wrote a poem on the abdication of King Charles III or about the sex life of the Royals... anybody who knew my work would know I'm not a contender.

Tony Harrison

Categorized in : Me King Life Work

Not becoming 'something' scares me the most. I just want to be remembered for something great.

Tony Harrison

scare becoming want

My favorite memories were never about candy or anything like that. When I got to be a teenager, my friends and I used to get together and do all kinds of crazy stuff on Halloween night. We had a ball starting trouble. Now that I'm more mature I realize that wasn't the right way to act, but it was the time of my life back then.

Tony Harrison

halloween crazy memories

I always like to be somebody scary. When I was little, my mom used to make our costumes. She's really creative and would make us great costumes without having to spend a lot.

Tony Harrison

scary mom creative

Articulation is the tongue-tied's fighting.

Tony Harrison

articulation tongue fighting

I have always disliked the idea of an arts ghetto in which poetry is kept on a life-support system.

Tony Harrison

support-systems ghetto art

The ones we choose to love become our anchorwhen the hawser of the blood-tie's hacked, or frays.

Tony Harrison

ties love-is blood

I don't really have one type favorite type of candy. When I was younger we used to always go to the rich neighborhoods where they give out the big candy bars, not the little fun-sized ones. We'd go back two and three times, hit them again and again. They didn't care and we loved it.

Tony Harrison

fun giving two

I used to be scared of the Candyman. You'd say his name three times in the mirror and then he'd come get you. I was terrified of that stuff becoming true. My older cousins used to say things to make us believe crazy stories like that, so I was scared of the Candymanuntil I knew better.

Tony Harrison

cousin crazy believe

I love being on the road with others, with a camera, but also being alone writing poetry.

Tony Harrison

road alone poetry love

A poem, once it's written, is meant to be read with the inner voice of the person who reads it.

Tony Harrison

person meant-to-be inner-voice voice

A lot of my activity in the theatre, and even in writing poems, was a kind of retrospective aggro on the English teacher who wouldn't allow me to read poetry aloud.

Tony Harrison

me theatre poetry teacher

For me, there is a paradox in poetry, which is like the paradox in tragedy. You have the most terrible subject, but it's in a form that is so sensually gratifying that it connects the surviving heart to the despairing intellect.

Tony Harrison

me you poetry heart

I spent a lot of time on recce. It is a kind of creative chaos, but I like the sense of creative serendipity.

Tony Harrison

like chaos creative time

Coming from a very inarticulate family made me try to speak for those who can't express themselves and created a need for articulation at its most ceremonial - poetry.

Tony Harrison

me family poetry speak

I've realised darkness and light are inter-dependent, just as death is an enhancer of life.

Tony Harrison

light darkness life death

I've always had the wish, the need, and the obsession to become a public poet.

Tony Harrison

need always poet wish

I think that, as you get older, you want to be freer rather than more bound.

Tony Harrison

more think you want

I think it's the tendency to want to create gods and monotheistic absolutes and absolute certainties that is the continual temptation in human thought - that's the great danger. Every time we create a god, we diminish humanity.

Tony Harrison

great humanity god time

One of the important things about familiar form and metricality is that it draws attention to the physical nature of language: the spell-binding nature of it and the ceremony of articulation.

Tony Harrison

language nature important attention

I believe more in the power of drama than in the power of religion.

Tony Harrison

power drama believe religion