Harry Man: The poet who holds 'Every opinion'
- Sheelagh Caygill
- Jul 8
- 5 min read
Poet, translator, and visual artist Harry Man has won the Stephen Spender Prize and a Northern Writers Award (North of England). He has also been the recipient of the UNESCO Bridges of Struga Award. With Endre Ruset, he co-wrote Deretter (Thereafter) which was published by Flamme Forlag in Norway and in pamphlet-form by Hercules Editions in the UK. It was a Dagblaget Book of the Year 2021 and was shortlisted for an Iowa Review Award. His work has been additionally shortlisted for a Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry and two Saboteur Awards. He has been a Clarissa Luard Award Wordsworth Trust Poet in Residence and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. He is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University. His first collection Popular Song is available from Nine Arches Press. You can find more of his work at www.manmadebooks.co.uk.
The poet who holds 'every opinion': Shaping style through lived experience
OCW: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?
HM: Fernando Pessoa who was famous for writing in the style of several different personalities that he called “heteronyms”. These included a doctor, an occultist and a futurist among more than a dozen others. Pessoa said himself that, “To have no opinion is to exist” and that to “hold every opinion is to be a poet.” I can understand that multiple position as a poet. In Popular Song, I write from the perspective of figures like the Invisible Man, or the narrator of a guided meditation cassette talking to the birds of the British Isles, or the CEO of Aramco reinvented as a demon from a Choose Your Own Adventure fantasy novel. I have usually sidelined my own life, because going for a walk, or going on any journey, a lot of the time you’re not interested in how much it cost you, you’re interested in where you’ll go.
From hashtags to the natural world: Tracing themes in Harry Man's writing
OCW: Can you trace any common themes across your writing?
HM: My writing style is eclectic and you can see Inger Christensen, Orwell and Oulipo in there as well as more traditional forms like the sonnet and the sestina.
To give you one example, when the convicted felon, head of the Republican Party in America, was first inaugurated, there were strong echoes of the Brexit vote and division and exploitation of social media. As a poet you’re interested in the unit of the line. Hashtags work as a form of categorisation, with each line of four hashtags operating in order of importance from most important to least and then with a non-rhyme emphatic flourish, almost like a chorus, or a Shakespearean aside to the audience. So in one poem, I took Orwell’s 1984 and rendered the book through popular and trending hashtags, I slowly developed the poem into lines like:
And
These are all active hashtags including the brand of coffee from 1984, Victory Coffee, which is both used as a moment of celebration as well as a moment to advertise a brand of coffee owned by a former US Navy SEAL. Of course there is the central theme of surveillance capitalism, but the poem’s also talking about the future.
I wanted to shine a light on the issues involved with providing sensitive information to bidders that did not share the same accountability that a close friend might have when seeing your photograph album full of candid photos, or the confidentiality we enjoy at a doctor’s appointment. Inevitably that does require thinking about the world from both the point of view of the observer and the observed. This is what I take from Pessoa’s notion that a poet must “hold every opinion”.
These poems sit alongside more autobiographical writing, drawn from very real experiences of walking in Dartmoor and through the Black Mountains in Wales, growing up in London through the 1987 storms and the time I spent working the night shift at a large supermarket during the pandemic, exploring Norway, as well as thinking about love both lost and found. I do enjoy playing in poems, but behind all of my work is the question of the tenability of the natural world.
The eclectic reader: Discovering inspiration and advice for writers
OCW: Which authors and/or types of books do you like to read?
HM: YouTuber Callux sat in an anechoic chamber in London for one hour and 26 minutes. During that time he mistook the sound of his own blood for the London Underground and followed hallucinations around the room that brought tears to his eyes. We all might crave silence, but you can have too much of a good thing. With this in mind, there are books I like to read, but my taste fluctuates wildly. I have just finished reading Wyl Menmuir’s The Heart of the Woods which is a tender, memoir-travelogue about the UK’s woodlands and our relationship with trees and the craftspeople from around the world who devote their lives to woodworking and it’s reminiscent of Roger Deakin (whose writing is deservedly admired by so many – Deakin was one of the founders of Friends of the Earth).
I have been reading and re-reading Jennifer Wong’s excellent time difference which pulls together her experiences between Hong Kong, the UK and China. I read a lot of Norwegian poetry to work on Deretter (‘Thereafter’) and my recent translation of Endre Ruset’s poetry, Noriaki. At the same time, I’ve been reading Ella Frears’ Goodlord where Frears takes on the taboo subject of the UK’s 20-year housing crisis and the psychological oppression and deep financial and wellbeing precarity that accompanies living through eight financial crashes. One of my favourite books this year was Liz Berry’s The Home Child, which is like reading all the parts for each section of the orchestra in a poetry symphony, discussing a very under-regarded subject at the same time of home children and child migration in Nova Scotia. A worthy subject is one thing, but to research it so carefully about something so personal and write it so skilfully and musically—just wonderful, I could keep re-reading and re- reading that book.
Separately, I also enjoy specifically reading books that I am not drawn to at all, or at first glance might otherwise decide to dismiss. So I’ve also been reading about Roman military history but I won’t name authors!
It’s so important to develop my taste as a writer and to research subjects, craft and technique that sit outside of my own day to day vocabulary. I am always looking for new European (and global) literature alongside reading some old and future classics.
I am due to run a community book club in September with a focus on the short story. So at the moment the carpet in my little office is getting covered up by little piles of stories for the group from writers across the world.
Take a break and be more creative!
OCW: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?
HM: It may seem counterintuitive, but go outside and take that walk, even if you don’t feel you have the time. Research has shown that even a small amount of aerobic exercise boosts creativity and of course read everything you possibly can.
OCW: Do you use social media to engage readers, writers, or publishers and, if so, which platforms?
HM: You can find my beautiful bookshop terrible selfies and the occasional poem and translation, both in-progress and published over at: www.instagram.com/harrymanonthegram
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