Slung Low and the London Review of Books are to bring Tony Harrison’s poem ‘v.’ home to Holbeck Cemetery for its 40th anniversary, with unprecedented site-specific readings on Sunday 12 October, in a celebration of Harrison’s life and work, following his death on 26 September 2025.
Tony Harrison’s ‘v.’ is one of the great English poems of the 20th century. First published in the LRB in January 1985, then as a book by Bloodaxe in November of the same year, 2025 is its 40th anniversary year. To mark it, the LRB approached the celebrated Holbeck-based theatre company Slung Low, with Harrison’s encouragement, about bringing the poem home for some live readings in the city.
Thanks to Slung Low’s expertise in site-specific performance and community engaged practice, these will be taking place in Holbeck Cemetery, where Harrison’s parents are buried, and where the poem is set – on Sunday 12 October.
Tony Harrison died on Friday; the enduring power and influence of his unparalleled body of work, as poet, playwright and translator, and his remarkable life story, have already been the subject of obituaries in the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and beyond. After discussion with Harrison’s family and longstanding collaborators, some of whom are involved in this project, the event will continue as planned, as a unique and fitting celebration of Harrison’s most famous work. A poem which concludes, after all, with ‘the chiselled epitaph I’ve planned’ for his own gravestone.
Harrison, who was born in Beeston, wrote ‘v.’ after finding racist graffiti in Holbeck Cemetery while visiting his parents’ grave. The poem tackles industrial decline, class war, rampant xenophobia, inadequate political solutions, football and family, with Harrison savagely confronting his own social mobility in the process.
After two years largely under the radar, it was thrust into the limelight in 1987 when Mary Whitehouse learned that Channel 4 planned to broadcast a film of Harrison reading the poem in full, interspersed with footage of striking miners and Margaret Thatcher’s V for victory, directed by Richard Eyre. ‘A torrent of four-letter filth’ screamed the Daily Mail. A Conservative MP tried to table an early day motion with the title ‘Television Obscenity’ to stop the film being aired. When it was eventually broadcast at 11pm on 4 November 1987, it contained the longest sequence of sexually explicit words in British television history.
V. A Homecoming brings Harrison’s poem back home to the southern edge of Leeds, and the very location that inspired it, for a day of live readings directed by Kully Thiarai, Co-Chair of Slung Low and formerly Creative Director and CEO of LEEDS 2023. A cast of five will perform the poem in full in Holbeck Cemetery, to audiences listening to the reading through headphones, immersed in the environment in which the poem is set.
Later that day, the reading will be reprised at The Warehouse in Holbeck, the company’s main base – after which there will be a panel discussion about the poem’s power and significance featuring, among others, Professor Edith Hall, a leading authority on Harrison’s work.
Kully Thiarai, Director of V. A Homecoming said:
“As a working class teenager growing up in the 80s much of what Harrison captures in ‘v.’ is a potent reminder of the world I had to navigate. Yet it seems as I read the poem now it demands our attention even more powerfully today, in a world where there is so much division and fear.
“I feel very privileged to be able to work on this presentation as part of the 40th anniversary and bring the poem back to where it started, enabling us all to look at how we might come together for a more hopeful future.”
Sam Kinchin-Smith, head of special projects at the LRB, said:
“Tony Harrison’s poem is a late 20th-century literary (and political) masterpiece, one of the truly important, lasting works to be published by the London Review of Books. Our long association with Harrison, who published many great poems in our pages, and who is also the subject of some wonderful essays, is a source of immense pride and gratitude for the paper – especially at a moment like this.
“Bringing ‘v.’ home would have been impossible without the amazing energy, creativity and improvisatory spirit of Slung Low. This will be a unique literary occasion, and a very special one: above all, a day of gratitude.”
On 14 November, the 40th anniversary of the publication of the poem as a book, the LRB will also release the second volume of their ‘LRB 45s’ project: a new recording of ‘v.’ read by Maxine Peake in Highgate Cemetery, available only as a limited edition box-set of three 7-inch vinyl records.
PERFORMANCE TIMES
12pm at Holbeck Cemetery
2.30pm at Holbeck Cemetery
5pm at The Warehouse in Holbeck, followed by a post-show discussion
Tickets will be Pay What You Decide: book a free ticket for the event in advance to guarantee your place, and decide what you pay at the end of the event. For further event details, visit: slunglow.org/v-a-homecoming
This post is based on a press release issued by Slung Low and the London Review of Books
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