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 film Black Daisies for the Bride won the Prix Italia in 1994; this and his volume of film/poems The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other Film/Poems and his feature film Prometheus are published by Faber & Faber. His most recent film/poem was Crossings (LWT), 2002. In 2007 his Collected Film Poetry was published by Faber and his Collected Poems by Penguin. His play, Fram, premiered at the National Theatre in 2008. Tony Harrison was awarded the first PEN/Pinter Prize in 2009.