He published poems and limited edition books in London and New Zealand before his first main collection, The Distribution of Voice (University of Queensland Press),appeared in Australia in 1993.
Harrison's 1997 poetry collection The Kangaroo Farm (Paper Bark Press) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, and his 2001 collection Summer (Paper Bark Press) won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize in Poetry from the University of Melbourne.
Harrison's poetry has been translated into Chinese (A Kangaroo Farm trans Shaoyang Zhang, Jiangsu, Nanjing 2008) and into French.
British critic David Morley has defined Harrison as the writer of "some of the most brilliant metaphysical nature poems of our time.
"[citation needed] Nigel Wheale captures a similar sense, reviewing The Kangaroo Farm in the London Review of Books (20:19, 1998), describing the poems as attempts to create "livable locales" and a form of pursuit for places where, in Wheale's words, "ordinary happiness might reside."