SOURCE: “In the Canon's Mouth: Tony Harrison and Twentieth-Century Poetry,” in Tony Harrison: Loiner, edited by Sandie Byrne, Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 189-99.

[In the following essay, Forbes argues that Harrison has more in common with eighteenth-century poetic models than his twentieth-century contemporaries.]

There has been surprisingly little discussion of Tony Harrison's poetics, as opposed to his subject-matter. The crossing of his classical education with his background has mesmerized many into thinking that's all there is to it. Douglas Dunn, a poet with whom Harrison has occasionally been linked to form a notional school （tagged ‘Barbarians’ after Dunn's book of the name, or ‘Rhubarbarians’, after Harrison's poem）, has briefly considered Harrison's poetry on several occasions.

＼H］is style is reminiscent of the sub-classical manner of Thomas Gray. Historically alert readers might also sense the pre-Augustan clarity of Dryden, or the varied urbanities of Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Ovid and Martial...