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Tony Harrison

Writing

Biography

Tony Harrison was an English poet and playwright.

Known For

The Mysteries
N/A

National Theatre Cottesloe production filmed for Channel 4

The Mysteries

1985
The Blue Bird
5.5

Peasant children Mytyl and Tyltyl are led on a magical quest for the fabulous Blue Bird of Happiness by the fairy Berylune. On their journey, they're accompanied by the anthropomorphized presences of a Dog, a Cat, Light, Fire, and Bread, among other entities.

The Blue Bird

1976
The Oresteia
10.0

Agamemnon returns home from the Trojan war and is murdered by his wife, setting off a chain of revenge that stretches across this trilogy of play. Directed by Peter Brook for the National Theatre, this is an all-male performance with masks.

The Oresteia

1983
Prometheus
5.8

Tony Harrison's poetic essay on the working class - in particular the British miners -, its struggles, its dreams and its icononography - at the very end of the 20th century, as interpreted through the myth of Prometheus.

Prometheus

1999
The Blasphemers' Banquet
N/A

A film-poem written in response to the controversy surrounding Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses

The Blasphemers' Banquet

1989
Black Daisies For The Bride
10.0

A play written by Tony Harrison as a tribute to sufferers of Alzheimer's disease. Filmed in High Royds Hospital, Menston, Yorkshire, the play combines drama, documentary, song, verse and music to unravel the lives of the residents.

Black Daisies For The Bride

1993
V.
7.7

Visualisation of Tony Harrison's poem "v.". v. is about the multiple meanings of the letter - victory, versus, verses, etc. Starting from an incident in a Leeds' graveyard where the poet's parents' headstone has been defaced with graffiti,v. rises to a view of the divisions, antagonisms and aspirations within British society, and the poets own self.

V.

1987
The Gaze of the Gorgon
N/A

Film poem by Tony Harrison which takes the figure of the Gorgon as a metaphor for the "freedom-fixing politics" which have been responsible for so much conflict this century. It starts in 1992 Frankfurt where Harrison speaks through the mouth of the statue of the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. At Corfu in Greece he tells of the link between Heine, the Greek Gorgon and Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The Gaze of the Gorgon

1992