The Inky Digit of Defiance

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 was born in Leeds in 1937. His volumes of poetry include The Loiners (winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize), Continuous, v. (broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987, winning the Royal Television Society Award), The Gaze of the Gorgon (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Poetry) and Laureate's Block. Recognised as Britain's leading theatre and film poet, Tony Harrison has written extensively for the National Theatre, the New York Metropolitan Opera, the BBC, Channel 4, the RSC, and for unique ancient spaces in Greece, Austria and Japan. His films include Black Daisies for the Bride, whichwon the Prix Italia in 1994, The Shadow of Hiroshima, Prometheus and Crossings. Five volumes of plays and his Collected Film Poetry are published by Faber and his Collected Poems by Penguin. His play, Fram, premiered at the National Theatre in 2008. Tony Harrison was awarded the PEN/Pinter Prize 2009, the European Prize for Literature 2010, the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2015, and the Premio Feronia 2016 in Rome, in special recognition of a foreign author.