George Harrison's widow said the former Beatle never lost touch with his Liverpool roots.
Olivia Harrison discussed her new poetry book Came the Lightening at the University of Liverpool’s new Tung Auditorium at the Yoko Ono-Lennon Centre. Olivia’s collection of poems centres around the theme of grief after George’s death in 2001.
She initially began writing in 2018 or 2019 but decided to release a collection of poems in 2021 on the 20th anniversary of George’s death from lung cancer. When asked about why she decided to dedicate the poems to George, she said: "You know him through his songs, those are very intimate. I wanted to write from the core. I wanted people to know the subtleties of George."
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The wife of the former Beatle spoke about how she put her energy back into nature after George’s death and how it was very rewarding and inspired her to write ‘Death Is Good for The Garden’.
Olivia said: “There’s great parks in Liverpool… it’s lucky like that”.
She added: “Calderstones Park, I think had a big effect on George… He always said the garden [at Friar Park, the mansion George bought in January 1970] looked really familiar to him and when I went to Calderstones it’s not dissimilar, so I think that was always with him from his childhood."
When Olivia was asked about her poem ‘He (Never Hurt No One)’ and who George really was, she said: “He was a Liverpudlian, and Liverpool people are tough… you had to stand your ground and he was very bold like that… He was an honest person, what you saw of him that’s who he was”.
Olivia also spoke about the times she visited Liverpool with George. She said: “Of course, he took me to Blacklers [department store on Great Charlotte Street] where he had his first job, and Picton with the clock tower where they used to meet”.
She added: “We used to come up quite a bit. His dad and I and George drove around. They would talk about roads and flyovers and how much things had changed.
"We’d stay overnight with his dad [in Wavertree] and that was always really sweet”.
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