It was in 1973, during a production of The Family Reunion at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, that Edward Fox was first properly introduced to Four Quartets by the director Michael Elliott. On the Sunday evenings during the play’s run, Elliott, Fox and his co-stars Joanna David and Avril Elgar, presented a number of what were called ‘fit-up’ stagings of Eliot’s poem. READ
The T. S. Eliot Foundation and the Poetry Society of America are pleased to announce that John Murillo is the winner of the 2021 Four Quartets Prize for his poem “A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn” from his collection Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry (Four Way Books, 2020). READ
Ralph Fiennes will tour UK theatres this year with his one-man staging of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. The T. S. Eliot Estate are delighted to support and grant permission for this co-production by Theatre Royal Bath and the Royal & Derngate in Northampton. READ
Edna O’Brien will deliver this year’s T. S. Eliot Lecture on Eliot and Joyce on her birthday, 15th December. The Leap is the fifth in a series of lectures inspired by T. S. Eliot’s impact on modern literature presented by the Abbey Theatre and the T. READ
The Fall of a Sparrow, a new work on the life and writings of Vivien Eliot by Ann Pasternak-Slater, is published by Faber & Faber today. Based on a rich repository of primary evidence, much only recently uncovered, it corrects the accidental inaccuracies and deliberate distortions that have circulated around one of Bloomsbury’s most gossiped-about, enigmatic couples, while unveiling fascinating new discoveries that give a more balanced understanding of both partners. READ
Following live performances in New York, London and Los Angeles, The Fisher Center at Bard are offering audiences the chance to experience Four Quartets at home. Marrying dance, music, painting, and poetry, the collaborative performance has been described by the New York Times as “The greatest creation of dance theater so far this century”. READ
The earliest surviving letter from T. S. Eliot was written in Gloucester, Massachusetts in June 1898. In the letter, addressed to his “Papa”, 9-year old Eliot writes of the coolness of the house in the morning, a broken microscope, butterfly and spider specimens, and hunting for birds with his sister, Charlotte. READ
Brian Teare has won this year’s Four Quartets Prize for his poem “Toxics Release Inventory (Essay on Man)”, with Ilya Kaminsky (Deaf Republic) and Prageeta Sharma (Grief Sequence) announced as fellow finalists. The prize, presented by the T.
DIRECTIONS TO MY EXECUTORS
regarding the envelope enclosed herewith.
Miss Emily Hale, of Massachusetts, has presented to the Library of Princeton University the letters which I wrote to her between 1932 and 1947 – possibly a few of them a little earlier; any written after the death of my first wife are so different in sentiment that she may not have included them. READ
Hannah Sullivan is to give this year’s Annual T. S. Eliot Lecture in Oxford on Thursday 28th November at 5:30pm. The title of the lecture is T. S. Eliot and the Art of Abandonment.
Dr Hannah Sullivan is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow at New College, Oxford. READ
