Harrison's work as a poet is informed by the interests and discipline of the scholar, as demonstrated in his exemplary fastidiousness (I believe lovers of the works will grant the point), and also in his dedication to a learning project that we could fairly describe as archaeological. This scholarship is evidenced in the range and depth of his learning, and all those unfamiliar words that ensure that the present critic, at least, writes these pages with a hefty dictionary to hand. It is also evidenced, however (partly through that unfamiliar lexicon, that digging up) in terms that I have already attempted to delineate with the phrase ‘political imperative’. That imperative is to do, among other things, with paying respect to the dead, with material analysis of the remains of human cultures, as well as the unearthing of the unconscious (in the psychoanalytic sense), and the silenced: the repressed and the oppressed. It is not, though, a project solely concerned with the past. The unearthing and bringing to light of signs and their meanings (or histories of meaning) is involved in the issue of how to survive in the present. The epigraph to v. gives us a clue:

The quoting of the National Union of Mineworkers leader around the time of the divisive coal-strike in Britain is one mark of political allegiance. Also involved here, however, is the more general issue of the necessity of a scholarship that allows one to participate in the power-processes of the application, comprehension and contestation of signifying practices. The fastidiousness mentioned above, then, is vital. This project of learning, and the sharing of learning, is not something separate from Harrison's work as a poet. It is integral. I shall explore Harrison's ‘archaeological’ learning project in the present chapter by making a few comments on his work as a translator.

If we are to say that Harrison's scholarship shines through his poetry, we need also to mention that his personal and political investment in the work he signs his name to shines through his translations. Tony Harrison is hardly ever what we might call an ‘invisible’ translator.