A Poet behind the Camera

In this chapter Peter Symes explores Tony Harrison’s film-poems, describing how over the last four decades the poet has constantly experimented and learned from discovery, hard graft, trial and error. Taking three detailed examples, he outlines how Harrison has developed the form, and how the use of verse can intensify and illuminate the visual in ways not possible with prose. Harrison prefaced his major feature film, Prometheus, with Pasolini’s words: ‘to make films is to be a poet’. He has managed to invert that. He is a poet who makes film