This second collection of Tony Harrison's poetry for the stage contains his adaptations of Molière, Racine and Victor Hugo. Included are the plays The Misanthrope, Phaedra Britannica and The Prince's Plays.The volume contains introductions, written by Tony Harrison, to each of the plays.
In this richly varied selection of Tony Harrison's provocative prose of the last fifty years, the great poet of page, stage and screen presents a lifetime's thinking about art and politics, creativity and mortality. In so doing, he takes us on an extraordinary journey through languages and across continents and millennia, from his Nigerian Lysistrata to the British Raj of his version of Racine's Phèdre, to post-Communist Europe for the film Prometheus to a one-off performance of The Kaisers of Carnuntum at the Roman amphitheatre in Austria on the Danube, to the peace camp at Greenham Common, and from a Leeds street bonfire celebrating the defeat of Japan by the new atomic bomb to wines made from the vines on volcanoes.A collection of work filled with passion and humour that educates as it dazzles.'More than Yeats, Eliot or Auden, more than anyone writing in English this century, and perhaps the two before that as well, Harrison has demonstrated that verse drama remains a living artistic possibility.' Observer
Tony Harrison published his first pamphlet of poems in 1964 and for over fifty years has been a prominent force in modern poetry. His poetic range is truly far-reaching, from the intimate tenderness of family life and personal love, to war poems written from Bosnia and savage public outcries against politicians. In The Collected Poems, Harrison draws deeply both on classical tradition and on the vernacular of the street. Combining the private and the public in a way Harrison has made distinctly his own, and drawing on his working-class upbringing in Leeds, these are powerful poems for modern times. This is the first complete paperback collection of one of Britain's most controversial and critically acclaimed poets. 'Tony Harrison is the greatest poet of the second half of the 20th century. . . He writes brilliantly about class, love and Britain' Daniel Radcliffe 'Harrison is a masterly technician, and the most fiery and indelible English poet of the age. This book is a vineyard on a volcano' Paul Farley
This first collection of Tony Harrison's poetry for the stage is made up of his masterly adaptations of the medieval cycle of The Mystery Plays.Includes The Nativity , The Passion and Doomsday , with an Introduction by Tony Harrison which places these Northern classics both in the context of the original cycle of plays and of Tony Harrison's own poetry.
A revised edition of Tony Harrison's award-winning Selected Poems This indispensable new selection of Tony Harrison's poems includes over sixty poems from his famous sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence and the remarkable long poem 'v.', a meditation in a vandalized Leeds graveyard which caused enormous controversy when it was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and is now regarded as one of the key poems of the late twentieth century. This substantially revised and updated edition now also features a generous selection of Harrison's most recent work, including the acclaimed poems he wrote for the Guardian on the Gulf War and then from the front line in the Bosnian War which won him the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry in 2007. Selected Poems is a collection to be savoured by fans of Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage and Sophie Hannah. 'A voracious appetite for language. Brilliant, passionate, outrageous, abrasive, but also, as in the family sonnets, immeasurably tender' Harold Pinter 'In the front rank of contemporary British poets. Harrison's range is exhilarating, his clarity and technical mastery a sharp pleasure' Melvyn Bragg 'The poem "v." is the most outstanding social poem of the last twenty-five years. Seldom has a British poem of such personal intensity had such universal range' Martin Booth 'Poems written in a style which I feel I have all my life been waiting for' Stephen Spender 'A poet of great technical accomplishment whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence' Sean O'Brien, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry
Tony Harrison's sixth collection includes a foreword by Lee Hall. The book contains Harrison's translation of Euripides's Hecuba, which inaugurated the modern amphitheatre of Delphi in 2005; the remarkable Fram, which opened at the National Theatre in 2008; and Iphigenia in Crimea, after Euripides, which premiered on BBC Radio 3 to mark Tony Harrison's eightieth birthday in 2016.'Tony is that incredibly rare beast: as great a playwright as he is a poet.' Lee Hall 'I am convinced that Tony Harrison is one of the truly great poets writing in English today.' Melvyn BraggHecuba 'Harrison's urgent translation never lets us forget the aching topicality of Euripides' study of the powerful and the powerless.' Guardian Fram'Harrison brings gloriously rich life to the stage, by turns funny and rending. His couplets are a feast for rhyme junkies.' Financial Times'As visually resplendent a piece of theatre as you will see all year. The words more than hold their own, however, expressing in rhymes to be relished that poetry might yet, if not lead us out of the darkness, at least make us feel ashamed we're still stuck in it.' Sunday Times Iphigenia in Crimea Set in Sebastapol, 1854, inthe midst of the Crimean war, a lieutenant decides to stage an all-male production of Euripides's tragedy. After initial raucous incredulity, the atmosphere changes as the men commit themselves to the drama until, as it draws to a close, ancient and modern worlds collide and warfare resumes in earnest.
This third collection of Tony Harrison's theatre work contains three plays, all of which were written to be performed in specific places in the world. Poetry or Bust, performed in September 1993, is about the Airedale poet John Nicholson (1790-1843) and devised for the former wool-combing shed at Salts Mill, Saltaire, not a hundred yards from where Nicholson drowned. The Kaisers of Carnuntum was performed on 2 June 1995 in the Roman amphitheatre of Petronell/Carnuntum in Austria and has the bloody Commodus, a Roman Emperor (180-192 AD) and son of the philosopher Marcus Aurelius, returning to the former Roman frontier town. The Labourers of Herakles, using a chorus of nine cement mixers, was performed on an excavated site intended for the new theatre of the European Cultural Centre of Delphi, Greece, on 23 August 1995. The volume also contains photographs, a selection of the music and an introductory essay by Michael Kustow.
A revised edition of Tony Harrison's award-winning Selected Poems This indispensable new selection of Tony Harrison's poems includes over sixty poems from his famous sonnet sequence The School of Eloquence and the remarkable long poem 'v.', a meditation in a vandalized Leeds graveyard which caused enormous controversy when it was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 and is now regarded as one of the key poems of the late twentieth century. This substantially revised and updated edition now also features a generous selection of Harrison's most recent work, including the acclaimed poems he wrote for the Guardian on the Gulf War and then from the front line in the Bosnian War which won him the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry in 2007. Selected Poems is a collection to be savoured by fans of Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Simon Armitage and Sophie Hannah. 'A voracious appetite for language. Brilliant, passionate, outrageous, abrasive, but also, as in the family sonnets, immeasurably tender' Harold Pinter 'In the front rank of contemporary British poets. Harrison's range is exhilarating, his clarity and technical mastery a sharp pleasure' Melvyn Bragg 'The poem "v." is the most outstanding social poem of the last twenty-five years. Seldom has a British poem of such personal intensity had such universal range' Martin Booth 'Poems written in a style which I feel I have all my life been waiting for' Stephen Spender 'A poet of great technical accomplishment whose work insists that it is speech rather than page-bound silence' Sean O'Brien, The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry Tony Harrison's Collected Poems was published by Viking in 2007. Harrison is also a translator, playwright and film-maker. His highly acclaimed adaption of the Mysteries debuted at the National Theatre in 1985. In 2006 he won the Wilfred Owen Poetry Award for his recent war poetry, and in 2009 he was the inaugural winner of the PEN/Pinter Prize.
Tony Harrison has developed a unique form of film/poem to confront the major horrors of the twentieth century. This collection includes the winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award, The Gaze of the Gorgon; his defence of Salman Rushdie, The Blasphemers' Banquet, his four-part poem Loving Memory; A Maybe Day in Kazakhstan; and The Shadow of Hiroshima. The volume was published to coincide with the screening of 'The Shadow of Hiroshima', directed by Tony Harrison, on Channel 4 television on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, 6 August 1995. The introductory essay by Peter Symes, BBC television producer and director of many of these film/poems, provides an insight into Tony Harrison's methods of working in this medium.
This fifth collection of Tony Harrison's masterly poetry for the stage contains introductions by the author to each of the plays. The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus was voted one of the best 100 plays of the twentieth century by the National Theatre Millennium Poll: 'One of the most brilliantly original things the National has ever done.' Sunday Times 'A wonderfully witty, provocative piece of theatre.' Guardian 'Harrison has created a glorious piece of total theatre.' Time Out 'Square Rounds is clearly a work of genius . . . It's so brilliant you leave the theatre in a kind of exhilarated pessimism.' Boston Globe 'It would be a stony soul who didn't salute Harrison's reckless theatrical audacity . . . A stunningly original piece of theatre.' Guardian 'Let's hand it to Tony Harrison: when it comes to taking theatrical risks, he has no rival.' The Times Tony Harrison is the recipient of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award 2004.
This fourth collection of Tony Harrison's poetry for stage contains his highly acclaimed translations of Aeschylus, Aristophanes and Euripides. Included are the plays The Oresteia, and The Common Chorus (Parts I and II). This volume contains introductions, written by Tony Harrison, to each of the plays.
Directly inspired by events during the Gulf War, this play looks at the history of relations between the East and the West, and warfare in particular. Tony Harrison is the author of The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus.
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