In 1984-85, during the protracted coalminer’s strike in Great Britain, Tony Harrison, the well-known poet, dramatist, translator, and screenwriter, wrote the poem ‘v.’, modeled to an extent on Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’. In 1987, after Channel 4 made a film version of the poem, ‘v.’ acquired a certain notoriety, less for […]