About

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot is rightly one of the most famous poems in the world; but less well known is the fact that it was first published under its own covers in Richmond, in 1923, by Virginia Woolf.

On Thursday 29th of February at 7PM we will be joined by local author and former poetry editor at Faber & Faber Matthew Hollis to tease out the origins of the poem. He will give an audio–visual talk and signing for his new book The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, which was a Book of the Year in the Sunday Times, New Statesman and Financial Times.

In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. He reveals the cultural and personal trauma that forged The Waste Land through the lives of its protagonists — Ezra Pound, who edited it; Vivien Eliot, who sustained it; and T. S. Eliot himself, whose private torment is woven into the seams of the work. The result is an unforgettable story of lives passing in opposing directions and the astounding literary legacy they would leave behind.

So come down to Books on the Rise for a special evening where we dive deep into The Waste Land to see what this seminal poem still reveals today!