Tony Harrison: 17

Allusion to Classical figure Homer; Niobe

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Food as consolation

Note Palladas Poems Translations of the poems of Palladas, a 4th-century AD epigrammatist and teacher of literature in Alexandria Epigrams of varying length, some as short as two lines, the longest 20. Harrison’s rhyming couplets imitate the ancient poet’s elegiac couplets. The translations are in contemporary English vernacular and full of modern idiom, e.g. ‘hawking iambics like so much Betterbrite’ (no.43) and ‘our Champion, KOed’ (no.65). In the Preface to the collection Harrison speculates that ‘the undeniable roughness of his [Palladas’] tone was worked for’. Compare Harrison himself, the erudite poet who repeatedly opts to write in the demotic, northern tones and language of his upbringing.

Harrison also refers in the Preface to Peter Jay’s decision to rearrange the epigrams of the Greek Anthology by poet and period, rather than subject matter/type, when compiling his selection of modern versions. This has the effect of making the unique quality of Palladas apparent. Harrison first translated Palladas’ epigrams for inclusion in Jay’s anthology. (P. Jay (ed.) The Greek Anthology and Other Ancient Epigrams (Allen Lane, 1973).

Harrison’s preface to Palladas is reprinted in N. Astley (ed.) Tony Harrison: Bloodaxe Critical Anthologies I (Bloodaxe Books, 1991), p.133-5.