Tony Harrison, the British poet, died at 88. I can still remember reading a section his poem “V.,” alternately horrified and fascinated.
When a version was aired on television in the 1980s, people were outraged. The poem includes all the naughty words, as well as racial and gender slurs.
The passage that gripped me begins in a graveyard that is subsiding because it is over a worked-out coalmine. The poet, a scholar making a visit to his parents’ graves, sees listing tombstones painted with profanities.
Soccer hooligans and skinheads have been cutting through the cemetery with spray paint, taking their aggression out on the dead. The vandals are supporters of the local football club, Leeds United.
The poet thinks the “United” on his parents’ graves hints of oracle, but most of the vandals aren’t sages. They are sick with hatred.
The poet gradually reads the significance of v. It starts as Leeds United v. some rival football club. Then it is v.whatever racial or ethnic group comes to mind. Finally it is just v. — the mark of person who is against everything.
Harrison was born in Leeds to a working-class family. He went to the University of Leeds, where he studied classics. Some of his poems feature dialogs between himself, the poet-scholar he was, and the working-class guy he might have been.
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