Various bits of press that catch my attention about me in my various roles...

Bits of press and the like about AFH as a Performance Poet & Bandleader.

'The best of A F Harrold's poems have a subversive humour that is quite brilliant.' - Brian Patten.

'[...] a giant redhead called A.F. Harrold [...] some erotic effect.' - Hugo Williams, TLS, January 20 2006.

''37 Ways To Leave Your Yak' has some funny lines, but illuminates nothing.' - The Nail, Winter 2004.

'This Yak-Poet is Peter Cook and Spike Milligan rolled into one.' - Daljit Nagra.

Surreally good - The Most Boring Man In England & Other Love Songs. Behind possibly this year's most off-putting and misleading title lurks a small gem that for music lovers of a certain disposition will just make their Fringe. Ashley (AF) Harrold, our poet for the evening, is an English eccentric in the Viv Stanshall tradition, a machine-gun wordsmith whose paeans of praise address famous actresses, radio sweethearts, and assorted wildlife. Backed by the small but well-drilled Schadenfreude Orchestra, he opens with another object of much affection, Frank Zappa's Stinkfoot. This isn't the last we'll hear of Zappa, but before we get to Faust Is Not Dead... He Just Smells Funny, a largely improvised trialogue influenced by Zappa's Titties & Beer, all manner of endearing silliness presents itself. Dame Judi Dench is wooed to a riff not a million miles from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's Jungle Jenny. A camel runs off to sea to become a pirate. Sexual malfunction due to an apricot shortage plays over the Bo Diddley shuffle. In addition, the show goes interactive with the audience challenging its favourite band memebr to improvise an impression of the fruit of their choice. This won't be for everybody. But if you like a bit of irreverence with your rock or a haiku with your blues, and you fancy ending the evening with a grin on your face get thee to the Zoo. [That's the venue we were playing at.] The Herald - 2003.

From the Bracknell Out There Festival write up - 'Sunday got off to a ludicrous start with AF Harrold leaping around the Purple Turtle Tent like a manic Man from Del Monte with a ginger afro and no shoes, singing about Judi Dench and making his necessarily versatile band improvise around the concept of cucumbers.' Reading Chronicle - 2004.

From a gig at The Zodiac in Oxford - 'Finally A F Harrold & his Day Dream Ensemble. Obviously in to make up the "art" quota for this evening. The quirky act consisted of an amusing fellow backed by an exceptionally competent backing band (there I go again, the second use of the word competent in the review - bad sign). Poor Mr Harrold was doubtless a funny chap; his story about having an affair with the devil after swapping clothes would probably have been hilarious if vast swaths of it hadn't been drowned out in the general volume of the tune.' BBC Oxford Online (2003).

From the same show - 'The biggest curiosity of all is saved til last. A F Harrold, a gangly soul in a three piece suit with his band of mild mannered desperados. Slight comic asides permeate the songs, the tunes great as they are serving as a mere vehicle for the dextrous vocal talents of Mr Harrold. Such a wide range of lyrical subjects you may never see again, be they a song sung in the persona of a camel to the epic set closer when the devil (voiced by the guitarist) plays gooseberry on A F Harrold's date. The inter song banter is highly entertaining too and you don't want to take your eyes off the stage for a minute. The tunes themselves deviate from nursery rhyme simplicity to full on rockers, but it's all pulled off with aplomb. It's such a whirlwind head trip that the only way to fully appreciate it is to go and see them.' Russell's Reviews (2003).

Now, I'm not sure how much of this relates to me, or what it says about me, but I did a gig in Copenhagen in December 2005 and someone wrote thihs... - 'Engelske A.F. Harrold åbnede det sidste Grand Slam i 2005 med tyve minutters underholdende spoken word-show, hvorefter de indbudte poeter kastede sig ud i blodig kamp på ord. Mens ordene føg om ørene, stoppede publikum de gratis pebernødder i munden, og studsede over det fine julepynt. Poetry Slam Cph. havde i julens anledning importeret kravlenisser helt fra Poetklub Århus!' Poetry Slam Cph (2005).

Reviews for AFH as literary poet.

'Poems which are true more than half the time.' - Leonard Cohen.

Logic And The Heart is a gorgeous book; Pip Hall’s Illustrations complement A.F. Harrold’s sensuous, sensitive poems beautifully. Harrold’s working definition of love is a refreshingly broad one, devoting the opening section to his father. These are brave and compassionate poems, Harrold’s strategy for dealing with his feelings being to lose (and find!) himself in words. When he is ‘finding it hard to be human, / humanity seeming to have no place in this room’, he ends up discoursing on the dictionary.

Section II explores a more conventional aspect of love, while Section III considers its aftermath. Harrold can barely resist tearing passion to shreds. He laments that ‘Trapped in words I muddle myself / with misunderstanding and sleight, / with ignorance and belief’ and warns ‘Ignore the poems, they are true only half the time.’ He perpetually walks the tightrope between thought and feeling, logic and the heart. The resulting poems are sufficiently complex for his readers to lose their footing, even if the poet himself never quite does. Poetry should challenge and when one falls into such metrical drive, wit, energy and yet delicacy as this, who would complain? What’s more, Harrold’s skill never (or hardly ever) tempts him to heartless acrobatics. In short, he’s as compelling as the recurring ‘bear from your dreams’ – a dangerous animal, perhaps, but the like of which it’s a misfortune not to encounter more often. Kate Keogan, PN Review 166, (November-December 2005).


Logic And The Heart - There are three sections to this very interesting series of love poems by AF Harrold: The first contains nine poems about his father’s last moments and death; the second recalls a particular relationship’s process, ending, and development past that ending; the third explores a cosmic universality of moment, season, philosophy, and meaning in love with its paradoxical qualities. Each series is sensitive, deep and meaningful; discreet and private, yet all-embracing and connecting. I found great enjoyment in the different intellectual levels explored, and appreciated the gentleness of spirit in the structure and rhythm of the work, which lies, sometimes, alongside an explicit physicality intrinsic to the poetic style. This collection is so successful that it could be suggested that logic was also in the heart of these poems. Pulsar Magazine (2005).


Logic & the Heart - A much more stylised love poetry from A F Harrold, but nonetheless, interesting. Harrold is a 30-something [read: 30 exactly] poet, originally from Suffolk [read: Sussex], now Berkshire, apparently excellent in performance, which is good to know. On the page his poems tend to wash over like waves because of their insistent rhythms. The book begins with a series of poems about the poet’s elderly, declining father. Moving stuff too, especially one about a memory of the last thing his father said to him – take care – though even then there is a sense of detachment, of a need to hide behind rhythm and abstract language. Later on, in poems to lovers, would-be and former lovers, he retains an ironic, amused, self-deprecating, almost bewildered tone that is sometimes charged with exuberance and deliberately over-the-top heroism. Sometimes it sounds too much like poetry to be convincing, almost as if he’s too interested in conceit and technique when he really needs to offer a dose of emotional honesty and a subject that’s hard and real. At times I was desperate for moments of sparser language, for poems that threw away technique and just let rip. However, it’s a book to like. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here. Iota, issue 70, Summer 2005.


Logic & the Heart - A.F.Harrold has built a reputation as a zany performance poet, children's entertainer and Viv Stanshall-like band leader. With LOGIC AND THE HEART, he attempts to make the leap to what he describes as literary poet. Harrold is an able technician — his natural use of cadence and rhythm is clearly a product of his grounding in performance poetry. The book is divided into three sections: the first considers the poet's response to the death of his father; the second records the development and ending of a close relationship; the third explores the mystery of love and ambiguity of relationships. For me, the most moving and successful section explores the decline and death of Harrold's father. Often we fail to recognise the decline of an ageing parent, as in the poem BEING THERE: ‘While I wasn't looking my father grew up, / and then he grew old and then he grew down’. And it comes as a shock to suddenly recognise the extent of that decline in SONG: ‘There's a skeleton in my father's bed / and the skeleton looks like him’. Like Harrold, death can leave us with regrets as in APOLOGIA: ‘Time is stretching out now, stretching finely, / so fine I'm afraid it's going to snap / ... / it is all the important things that have escaped, / they have faded or slipped away’. While, at the end of a life, the most prosaic phrase can assume significance as in LIVING: ‘"Take care." Those were the last words that my father said to me. / ... / And people still remind me to "Take care," / as if, somehow, by caring enough such things might change, / but more likely, I suspect, is that by always being careful / or by never being so, things, that is the world, will stay the same.’

The other sections of the book contain some excellent poems, but these do not work sequentially like the poems in the first section. I particularly enjoyed Harrold's humour as in TWO LINES: ‘This is the night when things come together, / when all ports are possible in any kind of weather.’ And the unusual TEA PARTY: ‘Love. Alice is in love. / She pours tea. Drinks tea. / Laughs. Alice is laughing. / Everyone stares at her tresses, / falling across her shoulders / and down the back of her dress. / Alice impresses’. While the metaphoric HOW TO AVOID BEARS, seems sensible advice for any lovers: ‘I have read many times and in many different sources / that the best way to not be eaten by bears / is to lie still and silent on the ground before them. // This is good advice, if it works, but better is, surely / to not be attractive to bears. Do not smell like honey. / Do not move like a fish. Do not breathe like you like bears.’

Whether LOGIC AND THE HEART has secured Harrold the right to style himself a literary poet, I leave his readers to judge. However, I recommend this book for its honesty, accessibility and craftsmanship and look forward to his next collection of poems for the page. New Hope International Review On-Line, 2005.

Of Birds & Bees. These poems feel slightly overwhelming, some a little obscure on first reading, but when read twice, thrice, they gather one up into A.F. Harrold’s world, and what a place that is. The birds, insects, and other creatures in these poems, some observed in England, others in California, are described with scrupulous attention to detail, and often with loving humour. An aura of love pervades the pages, whether Harrold is depicting ‘the tiny whirl-light bee,’ or a snail, ‘300 million years of design shining out,’ or visiting a girlfriend on Christmas morning. Plenty of joy and delight in this book, the poet marvels at the flight of a hummingbird, and is amazed to find a seagull performing the same reversing flight. ‘a wingtip on the wheel, an eye out the back window, / elbow crooked over the seat’s shoulder- only / the recorded message – this seagull is reversing – / was missing. I came home laughing, unexpected.’

He sees a dragonfly; ‘the fat flying twig of nacre-armour shifts / like a blur of geometry to a new there.’

I felt I was seeing these beings in a new light, a swan makes ‘his lomping lazy lope along that path,’ then becomes ‘a free-flying, flame-white arrow in flight.’

Poems to lift the spirits, but not without a pervasive sadness here and there, a hint of melancholy, a frisson down the spine. ‘something unique and immovable / was lodged inside me, troubling me.’
Soon dispelled by the interior of a seashell, ‘violet, smooth as unintended love.’

Although this collection doesn’t contain any overtly ‘love poems’ it is an affirmation of love, nature, and life: ‘it’s all going on, great thrusting life, going on all on its own.’

I’ve quoted widely from this collection, because I feel the poetry will lure and draw you in far better than my prose. The illustrations are beautifully drawn, lending an almost spectral, dreamlike quality to the pages. Kate Edwards, Pulsar September 2009