Tony Harrison the Translator: “Life’s a Performance. Either Join in / Lightheartedly, or Thole the Pain”

Much attention has been paid to Tony Harrison the poet and playwright, but much less to his translation activity. While there have been four substantial monographs written about him in English by Sandie Byrne, Christine Regan, Antony Rowland and Luke Spencer, no one has foregrounded the role of translation in his work. My paper will argue for the importance of his translations in his poetic career and will show how his method of translation is influenced by his poetics and ideology. While other prominent modern poet-translators, such as W. H. Auden, Robert Graves, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon and W. B. Yeats have translated the classics, Harrison’s approach is distinct because he works collaboratively with directors, translates directly from the source languages and brings a forceful poetics of his own to bear upon the text.