Kirjahaku

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.

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 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

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 between Vienna and Bratislava, tothe 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.'Slangy, rooted, erudite, rhythmic, Harrison is a titan among poets; a unique Yorkshire brew of Auden, Byron, Brecht and Kipling, with a slug of Roman satire.' Independent

Tony Harrison's v. was written during the Miners' Strike of 1984-85 when he visited his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery and found it vandalised by obscene graffiti. In the book-length poem, he confronts the foul-mouthed skinhead thug responsible, who becomes a foil for his own anger and alienation. The political and media reaction to v. would make a book in itself. This is that book. As well as Tony Harrison's poem and Graham Sykes's photographs, this new edition of v. includes press articles, letters, reviews, a defence of the poem and film by director Richard Eyre, and a transcript of the phone calls logged by Channel Four on the night of the broadcast. Channel Four’s film of v. won the Royal Television Society’s Best Original Programme Award. The Star: 'A plan to televise a poem packed with obscenities caused outrage last night. ITV chiefs intend to screen a reading of Tony Harrison's verse v. which is full of four-letter words.' Daily Mail: A torrent of four-letter filth… the most explicitly sexual language yet beamed into the nation's living rooms… the crudest, most offensive word is used 17 times.' Gerald Howarth, MP: 'It is full of expletives and I can't see that it serves any artistic purpose whatsoever.' Mary Whitehouse: 'This work of singular nastiness.' Sir Harold Pinter: 'The criticism against the poem has been offensive, juvenile and, of course, philistine. It should certainly be broadcast.' Sir Richard Eyre: 'If I had the slightest influence over educational policy in this country, I'd see that v. was a set text in every school in the country, but of course if we lived in that sort of country, the poem wouldn't have needed to be written.'

Tony has spent his whole life surrounded by reptiles. His work and his animals are regularly featured on TV and in movies. That means he has a tale or two to tell. In Snake Catcher, Tony shares entertaining and informative stories, written by award-winning Australian writer, David Blissett. You are part of the action as Tony enters a suburban bedroom to bag a large and lethal Eastern Brown Snake. You will meet Tiger, the Lace Monitor who is afraid of heights. And you will find out what happens when you try to flush a venomous snake down the toilet. However, more than telling great stories and showing great pictures, this book has another purpose. Tony wants to dispel the myth that 'the only good snake is a dead snake.? He shares his insights into some truly fascinating reptiles, and gives common-sense advice about living safely with them.