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Film and theatre poet Tony Harrison

Tony Harrison, Britain's leading film and theatre poet, is an impressive man. His groundbreaking version of the Oresteia was staged at the National Theatre in 1981, and his poem about urban vandalism, V, outraged the nation's tabloids when it was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987. At the moment, his new version of Euripides' Hecuba is being performed by Vanessa Redgrave in her first appearance with the RSC for forty years.

Vanessa Redgrave as Hecuba. Tony Harrison worked closely with the cast as the staging in of this production.

Harrison is an energetic, generous man with a mellifluous Yorkshire accent and a lyrical turn of phrase. He is passionate about language, especially ancient Greek: his translations of Greek plays have been some of his most acclaimed works.

We met during Hecuba rehearsals, with which Harrison is closely involved. He enjoys working closely with the cast and design team of all his productions because, he explains, "The whole thing is organic." The aim is to create, by means of space and language, a unique "world" for the audience and cast to inhabit.

Harrison believes that an ancient text can be re- interpreted again an again for different audiences at different times.

What attracts Harrison to the art of translation, it seems, is the endless variety of expression which an ancient text allows. "A translation can rock and roll", he says. An ancient text can be re-interpreted again and again for different audiences at different times. Each time, the "world" of the play can be changed to give a totally different experience of the original. Harrison has translated Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata twice, one set on Greenham Common, and one in Africa . Each time he went back to the text, he found that the play's key themes of women, sex and power opened up in different ways.

Poster of the Oresteia, translated by Tony Harrison for the production at the National Theatre.

Each new translation needs a new kind of language to breathe fresh life into the ancient author. The Oresteia used modern Anglo-Saxon to give his language the same sense of rugged majesty that is so obvious in Aeschylus' original. Euripides, Harrison acknowledges, is a different thing altogether. His version of Hecuba is colloquial, slippery, and at times overtly political, such as when the Greek forces at Troy are called the "coalition".

Hecuba is an important project for Harrison , since its expression of war and the horror of human experience is, for him, rooted in his upbringing, surrounded by the rhetoric and images of the Second World War. Its themes are particularly urgent in the context of today's tragedy in the Middle East . Greek tragedy, he says, is a way in which we can cope with the horrors of modern existence.