Hellenic Society - AGM & Colloquium 'Tony Harrison’s Greece'
This event is co-organized by the SPHS and the APGRD.
Join us for an afternoon devoted to the ancient Greece of one of Britain's foremost verse writers, Tony Harrison (1937-2025), with an emphasis on his film poems, including The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992), Prometheus (1998), and Metamorpheus (2000). The programme will explore how Harrison’s classicism—shaped by his lifelong engagement with Greek literature—finds urgent modern expression in these works, where tightly wrought verse meets stark visual imagery.
2pm: AGM
2:30pm-5:30pm: Colloquium 'Tony Harrison's Greece'
2.30-3.00: Agata Handley (Lodz): ‘It is not in the hereafter . . .’: Death and Ekphrasis in Tony Harrison’s Film Poetry
3.00-3.30: Henry Stead (St Andrews): The barbed-wire lyre
3.30-3.45: Questions
3.45-4.15: Tea and cake
4.15-4.45: Edith Hall (Durham): Framing the Rhythm in Tony Harrison’s Film Poems
4.45-5.15: Oliver Taplin (Oxford) in conversation with TV executive producer and editor Peter Symes
5.15-5.30: Questions
5.30: Reception