During his early career he was part of a circle of poets centred on Ian Hamilton and forming something of a school, promoting conciseness and imagist-like clarity in verse, though his work has changed and developed a good deal since then.[citation needed]
He has published twelve collections of poetry which have won several literary prizes and awards. Legion won the Forward Prize for best collection 2005 and was shortlisted for both the T. S. Eliot and Whitbread Awards. Night (2012) was triple short-listed for major awards in the UK and won the Griffin International Poetry Prize. Fire Songs won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2014. Sprinting from the Graveyard, his versions of poems written by the Bosnian poet Goran Simić, while under siege in Sarajevo, appeared in 1997 and was adapted to opera, radio and television. In Secret, his versions of Yiannis Ritsos, was published in 2012. His work in music theatre has involved collaborations with a number of composers (but most often with Sir Harrison Birtwistle) and has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Carnegie Hall, the Southbank Centre, The Proms, the Wiener Kammeroper, the Southbank Centre, the Aldeburgh Festival, the Holland Festival, and broadcast on BBC Two, Channel 4 and Trio (USA). The Minotaur (also with Birtwistle), opened at The Royal Opera House in 2008. Birtwistle once again turned to Harsent's words for his major song cycle Songs from the Same Earth (2012–13) and for the chamber operas The Corridor and The Cure.. The New York Times described Harsent and Birtwistle as a 'team creating alchemy'. Other words for music include operas Crime Fiction and In the Locked Room (music by Huw Watkins) and When She Died (music by Jonathan Dove), together with the song cycle Man Made: an early response to the climate crisis (music by Christian Mason) and an oratorio, The Judas Passion (music by Sally Beamish). Harsent is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Fellow of the Hellenic Authors Society. He was appointed Distinguished Writing Fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.[2]
In 2012 he was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.[3] He left Bath Spa University in favour of The University of Roehampton in July 2013 after receiving an honorary degree.[4]
