Tony Harrison: The White Queen

Length / Form ‘The White Queen’ is the title given to a series of five poems of varying length.

Relationship to Classical text In 1. ‘Satyrae’: wandering satirical style combined with fairly regular metre (mostly iambic pentameter) contains strong echoes of Juvenal, particularly the sexual imagery of his sixth satire. In 2. ‘The Railroad Heroides’: Harrison inverts the gender balance of Ovid’s Heroides, since in his poem it is a male voice who addresses the female, African lover he is travelling away from. In 3. ‘Travesties’: After Hieronymus Fracastorius’ poem Syphilis, sive Morbus Gallicus (1530, written in Latin) in which a young shepherd is punished by Apollo (Apollo and the siege of Troy are directly referenced in Harrison’s version). A reflection on the wisdom of translating poetry is provided by a quotation from Shelley's A Defence of Poetry (published posthumously, 1840).