The trajectory started when I was on the roof of our house looking out at a swamp when I was 19. I had written for several years, starting at about 15, but that day on the roof I took my vows and acknowledged my calling.

Wolf: A False Memoir (1971) was the result. You can put off a novel for a while but you can’t not write a poem because that particular muse is not very cooperative. "It’s totally uncontrollable" he says.

Harrison's characters tend to be rural by birth and to have retained some qualities of their agrarian pioneer heritage by dint of their intelligence and some formal education. He has been called "a force of nature" and his work has been compared to that of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.