In this episode, you will hear the brilliant actor Maxine Peake talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’Turns' by Tony Harrison.

Maxine visited The Poetry Exchange at John Rylands Library in May 2016. We’re very grateful to John Rylands Library for hosting The Poetry Exchange. Thank you also to Tony Harrison and Penguin Books for kindly granting permission for us to use the poem in this way.

Maxine Peake is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange hosts, Fiona Bennett and Michael Schaeffer.

'Turns' is read by Michael Schaeffer.

*****

Turns

by Tony Harrison

I thought it made me look more 'working class'

(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)

I did a turn in it before the glass.

My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.

(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:

You're every bit as good as that lot are!)

All the pension queue came out to stare.

Dad was sprawled beside the postbox (still VR),

his cap turned inside up beside his head,

smudged H A H in purple Indian ink

and Brylcreem slicks displayed so folks might think

he wanted charity for dropping dead.

He never begged. For nowt! Death's reticence

crowns his life's, and me, I'm opening my trap

to busk the class that broke him for the pence

that splash like brackish tears into our cap.

'Turns' by Tony Harrison. From ‘Selected Poems’. (Penguin; 3rd Revised ed. edition, 7 Feb. 2013)

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