The Poet V The British Establishment.

international | arts and media | opinion/analysis

Saturday September 22, 2007 14:14

by C Murray

There's No Need for a Conservative Party...

The preamble to 'V':-

"My Father still reads the dictionary every day. He says your life depends on your power to Master
words" Arthur Scargill, Sunday Times, 10th January 1982.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Scargill

'V', by Tony Harrison is no means his definite statement on or deconstruction of the systems
of power that mitigate against people, that would involve a look at his entire work, which include
his use of the Leeds vernacular in 'The Mysteries', his Translations of Seneca, which informed
the 'Theatre Works', his defence of ordinary people in Bosnia, Bradford, northern ireland
and his television collaborations which are collected in 'The Shadow of Hiroshima and
other film poems'

But in the last week the bogeys of the Thatcherite era have been re-surfacing in photo and
press and contemporarising for the neo-cons.. The Brown regime.

Scargill- A BBC Image

Scargill was loathed by the estabishment Tory party and it's motley collection of industrial
magnates and Harrison loathed the establishment using his poetic voice to highlight
inequity of treatment throughout his long career. He even came to Cuirt in Galway to read
and discuss the necessity of deconstructing the language of the establishment.
International newspapers this week carried multiple images of a magenta clad Mrs Thatcher
in the company of a variety of politicians including Gordon Brown and Yulia Tymoshenko,
And Rudy Giuliani too!

These delightful images culminated in info that the UK is exploring the possibility of
annexing areas in the North and South Atlantic for the purposes of gas and oil exploration.
[Guardian filler material]

The Book which probably most reflects the poet's defence of free speech is actually
a series of narratives that accompany the film poems, where he worked in close
collaboration with production companies to play with the idea of the illusion of TV
as a medium for expression:- 'The Shadow Of Hiroshima'

It includes 'The Blasphemer's Banquet' which uses images of fundamentalist theocracy
in all creeds and the simplification of language to accomplish appalling abuses on
people by those in power. The action is set around the scenes of Fatwa book burning
of 'The Satanic Verses' and as the production developed it included images of the
funeral of the Ayatollah Khomeni amongst the narrative . I cannot find a single link to
the film so include an extract:-

"'This isn't paradise but the Bradford Square
Where Rushdie's book got burnt, just over there.
By reading it where fools had it cremated
I bring it whole again, out of the air'

The films include 'The Gaze of the Gorgon' which has a Schuman Lieder as the central theme
and 'May day in Kazakhstan'.
Harrison includes The Reverend Ian Paisley (but not the Pope) in the movie.

He reported from the Frontline in Bosnia and did a cycle on the Miner's Strike which was
scathing in it's criticism of the Tories and defends the NUM and the 1984 pickets.
He refused the Laureateship, though many assumed that he was never seriously considered.
Interestingly the tension between the output of the former Laureate (Ted Hughes RIP-
an apocalyptic poet and defender of nature and language) and the voice of Harrison who
came from and espoused a socialist working class backround is great, with both
siting their major works in the Greek classics and language of myth and transformation.
Hughes 'Tales from Ovid' (in translation) speaks of human metamorphosis whilst
Harrison celebrates the human voice in 'V'.

So whilst Mrs Thatcher suits and policies are aired for a contemporary UK audience
its only fair that her most voiceferous critic too gets an airing:-
"If Love of art, or love, gives you affront
That the grave I am in's graffitied then, maybe,
erase the more offensive FUCK and CUNT
but leave, with the worn United, one small v.

victory? For vast, slow, coal-creating forces
That hew the body's seams to get the soul
Will earth run out of her 'diurnal Courses'
Before repeating her creation of black coal?