Richard Harrison was born in Toronto in 1957 and saw the Leafs win the Stanley Cup ten years later. After graduating with degrees in Biology and Philosophy from Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Harrison remained there and taught at the university for another seven years. He then moved to Montreal and earned an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University. In the mid-1990s, Harrison and his family moved to Calgary, where he had accepted a one-year appointment as the Markin-Flanagan Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary (1995-1996).  Harrison taught at the University of Calgary for one additional year and then moved to Calgary’s Mount Royal College, where he continues to teach Creative Writing and English.

Richard Harrison has published four books of poetry: Fathers Never Leave You (1987); Recovering the Naked Man (1991); Hero of the Play (1994); and Big Breath of a Wish (1998). His poems from Hero of the Play were featured on CBC Television’s Adrienne Clarkson Presents, and Big Breath of a Wish was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. His work has been featured in a number of anthologies, including ICE: New Writing on Hockey.

Harrison’s poetry covers such a wide range of topics and ideas, that he is able to appeal simultaneously to devotees of poetry and to people who perhaps have never read an entire book of poetry in their lives. His poetry on hockey proves to even the most skeptical reader of poetry not just that the term hockey poetry is not an oxymoron, but that in fact the words naturally belong together.

STANLEY CUP

At the centre of the circle of the Champions of the
World, Mario Lemieux hoists the Cup, kisses its silver
thigh, the names of men where his will soon be cut
with a finish pure as a mirror; around him, the
tumult. And Scotty Bowman, the winningest coach
in the NHL, named his first son Stanley when his
Canadiens won it in ’73 with a stonewall blueline and
a dizzying transition game. Every player of every
team who ever won the Cup gets to take it home; it
has partied on front lawns, swimming pools and in
the trunks of cars, and even the man who left it on
the side of the road and drove away, still he thinks
of it as holy. And that word - holy - appears most
in the conversation of veterans who know how the
touch fades, the shoulder takes longer between days
of easy movement, how Bobby Hull passes over his
chance to drink champagne from its lip when the
Hawks won it in ’61 because he thought there’d be so
many in his life. Some take the Cup apart, clean the
rings, make minor repairs in their basements, and
then inscribe on the inside of the column the un-
official log of their intimate knowledge: This way
I have loved you.

Richard Harrison – from Hero of the Play

In the same way as Harrison’s hockey poetry make the reader look differently at both hockey and poetry, the poems from Big Breath of a Wish reframe what any adult might perceive as meaningless babble from a baby or toddler to profound utterances that mark the path of that child’s gradual and remarkable discovery of language and meaning. They also capture moments and feelings that are instantly recognized by any parent, and which remind us that of the unspoken bonds we share with all parents in our private, day-to-day lives.

BIRTH DAY: THE VIDEO

The space of writing does not open like a door even though it is the
eve of your first birthday and the windows of our city shimmer
tonight like candles waiting for the big breath of a wish. We videoed
your birth, your mother and her midwives and I together in the
bedroom of our house; we thought of your first present to you as the
address of your birthplace, the familiarity of your first bed. You were
stuck in transition for a long time. I tell you this not to exact a price
but because of the way my eyes were opened on your mother that
day; away from where she groaned in the bedroom we took ourselves aside and discussed a C-section, the trip to the hospital unless or if.
I admired her also the way I admire athletes, exerting herself for a
purpose - we used this language to prepare ourselves - those groans
were the groans of a woman who did not allow the body to stop her.
But I find it hard, almost impossible, to watch the video now; it
unshields me in a way I did not think it would, in a way being there,
holding her, then you, did not. When I say I will write this, she tells
me, remember how she was born because they lost the sound of her heart,
why I had to push so hard and fast, tearing skin because of that silence. May
this always be a gift we give; we could not wait to hear you.

Richard Harrison, from Big Breath of a Wish

Author profile by Paul Martin, May 2003

Interview with Richard Harrison

Richard Harrison is currently at work on his next volume of poetry and on a second, expanded edition of Hero of the Play. To learn us more about his work and his upcoming books, we asked Richard the following questions over e-mail. Here’s what he had to say:

PM: Tell us a little bit about what led you to start writing. What made you choose poetry?

RH: I wish I knew how to answer this question in an original way. (Insert "laughs" here.)  Richard Wilbur got it right, though, when he talked about "Art's Debt to Art" in his essay by that name. There is no "origin" for art in us: we all heard or saw someone doing it and it twigged, it triggered something that said, "you should do this, too."

With me the first poem was the one my father recited -- he loved to recite poetry. I believe now that holding on to the great poems of the English language was his way of staying sane and civilized -- of staying alive -- during his days as a soldier in WWII. The poems reminded him of his humanity. I really believe that. But when I was a kid, his reciting of poems like "Pied Piper of Hamelin" or "Second Coming" or "Fern Hill" were tremendous moments of contact between the two of us. Maybe the best times we ever had in terms of understanding one another.

It was that contact within a poem that I think lay dormant in me until I got to first year. I was going to be a biologist, but I did write poems then, too, "on the side." And so I got invited to hear some of the best poets in Canada read when they visited, and I remember Pat Lane reciting "If" -- a beautiful poem arising out of obscenity -- and thinking, "I want that." And poet after poet confirmed that desire -- in person: Robert Kroetsch, bill bissett, Riley Tench, Ward Maxwell, Mary di Michele -- then in their work: Sharon Olds, Dylan Thomas, Gerard Manley