dialects, idiolects and multilingual poetries 173reducing all identities to uniformity. Looking at specifi c examples
of bilingualism and multiple language use, this chapter considers
the differences between dialect, linked to a direct transcription of
regional accent and idiom, and idiolects, often equated with the
deformation of linguistic rules in an attempt to create an assertive
identity. Frequently, contemporary poets evoke in their work an
ongoing attempt at the translation between languages, which will
be illustrated through processes of translation from Chinese to
English, Welsh to English and Spanish to English. In addition, the
chapter considers how contemporary poetry documents the expe-
rience and legacies of immigration.
DIALECT AND PHONETIC POETRY: TONY HARRISON,
TOM LEONARD AND LIZ LOCHHEAD
In an early interview, Tony Harrison draws attention to his per-
ception of hierarchical forms within English literature. He stresses
that his evocation and negotiation of metrical verse were an attempt
at ownership and occupation:
Originally I was drawn to metrical verse because I wanted
to ‘occupy’ literature as I said in ‘Them and [uz]’. Now that
I’ve occupied it in the sense that I can do it – I learned it as
skilfully as I could in order that people would have to pay
attention.^7The title of Harrison’s second volume From the School of Eloquence
( 1978 ) was borrowed from E. P. Thompson’s seminal book The
Making of the English Working Class ( 1963 ). In the pivotal poem
‘Them and [uz]’, from this volume, Harrison shows how the
instruction of so-called traditional English literature allowed no
space for regional identifi cations. Neil Roberts suggests that the
poem creates an initial focus upon ‘the parallels between social and
literary hierarchies in the Elizabethan period and later the imposi-
tion of RP and its stultifying association with the reading aloud of
poetry’.^8 The teacher castigates Harrison’s enunciation as a slur on
‘our glorious heritage’ (p. 122 ). The immediacy of the distinctions