Tony Harrison: Poetry or Bust

Length / Form Verse-play

Allusion to Classical figure The poet John Nicholson is visited by three Muses (‘But no looking to the summits of Parnassus! / The Muses you’ve got now are local lasses.’).

Allusion to Classical place Rome and Ancient Greece, Parnassus, Helicon, Hippocrene

Comment Nicholson uses a skewer to scratch his poems into the grease from untreated wool, which he ‘used like a waxen tablet’ (p.36).

Note First performed on 5 September 1993 at Salts Mill, Saltaire (Bradford) by members of Northern Broadsides. Collected inTony Harrison Plays 3, London: Faber, 1996.