Tributes to working class poet Tony, whose work reflected his roots

Tributes have been paid to poet and dramatist Tony Harrison from staff at the University of Leeds following his death aged 88.

- by Nicola Adam

Tributes to Tony Harrison, who has died aged 88.

Born to a working class family in the Leeds suburb of Beeston in 1937, Harrison won a scholarship to Leeds Grammar School and went on to enrol as a student at the University in the late 1950s.

Class-and the sense of estrangement from his roots that came as a result of his education - was a theme that he would return to throughout his career.

Harrison's formative experiences at the university included the appearance of his first published poem in the student magazine Poetry and Audience in 1957.

He engaged with a number of practising artists in residence on campus under the groundbreaking Gregory Fellowships programme, notably the sculptor Hubert Dalwood, who gave him a primer on the principles of working with clay in his Headingley studio.

His friendship with fellow student and future Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka led to Harrison taking a job at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria in the early 1960s.

Alongside Soyinka, comedian Barry Cryer and other contemporaries he wrote sketches and performed in student revues at the Empire Theatre in Briggate.

His love of, and instinct for, the stage was later realised in an extraordinary run of plays for the National Theatre, including his modern English adaptation of Molière's Le Misanthrope (1973).

The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, a liberal adaptation from Sophocles featuring football, phalluses and clog-dancing, was premiered at Delphi in 1988, with a later performance at the National and a 'homecoming' staged at Salt's Mill, Saltaire.