As part of Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’, and POW! Festival join Ann Pasternak Slater for a talk about T.S Eliot’s relationship with his first wife Vivien, and its impact on The Waste Land.

In 1921 Vivien sent Eliot to Margate to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. There, practicing scales on the mandolin, sheltering on the sea-front, Eliot began work on The Waste Land. His portrait of their marriage in the poem is bleak; her response unexpectedly positive. In this talk Pasternak Slater will set Eliot’s poem in the context of couple’s mental health in this memorable year.

Ann Pasternak Slater is a literary scholar and translator who is currently editing Vivien Eliot’s literary archive for publication by Faber & Faber in 2019.