Earlier this year, ArtSound Radio Theatre and Poetry on the Radio collaborated in a recording of a dramatised reading of a masterpiece of mediaeval English Literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It aired over three Sunday afternoons. Those recordings are now available online.
More than two years in preparation, ArtSound’s radio adaptation presented the narrative poem, set in the court of King Arthur, in a modern-language verse translation by the Canberra-based Australian poet, Keith Harrison.
An anonymous poet created Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in a dialect of Middle English at around the time of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It tells of a young knight who beheads a Green Giant, and then must undertake a quest whose startling goal is to submit himself to the same fate.
Our production uses Keith Harrison’s highly regarded translation, which is published by Oxford World’s Classics of the Clarendon imprint of Oxford University Press.
Keith Harrison is also the narrator of our production, which also features a cast of Canberra-based participants. Sir Gawain is played by Zahi Hoque; Theodore Ell plays The Green Knight and Sir Bercilak de Hautdesert; Emily Shepley is Lady Bercilak; Adrian Caesar is King Arthur; Fergus Armstrong is the Guide; and Peter Searles, Shane Strange and Peter Monaghan voice the porter and other attendants.
Shane Strange, publisher of the ACT’s leading poetry imprint, Recent Work Press, voices episode introductions by Keith Harrison. ArtSound’s communications team member Barbara Young recorded series and episode announcements.
Incidental music has been provided by Canberra-based consort Apeiron Baroque: John Ma, Marie Searles, and Lauren Davis. Thanks to Wesley Music Centre for accommodating our music recording.
And special thanks to ArtSound Manager of Technology, Chris Deacon OAM, for assistance with sound quality issues.
The three-by-one-hour series was directed and produced for ArtSound by Keith Harrison and Peter Monaghan. Keith Harrison is a poet, translator, essayist and playwright, and Emeritus Professor at Carleton College in Minnesota where he taught for many years and was sometime Editor-in-Chief of The Carleton Miscellany. Keith is the author of such works as Changes: New and Selected Poems (1966-2002); a memoir, Not Quite Ithaka (2023), and his verse translation of Sir Gawain.
