The Hellenic Society

Reminder: our members AGM is on 20 June at 2pm, Room G22/26 at Senate House, London WC1E 7HU.

It's followed by a colloquium to which you are warmly invited.

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.

The event is co-organized by the SPHS and the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama (APGRD).

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

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