Inspiration: ‘The Waste Land’ By T.S. Eliot
How one of the most influential poems ever written in English inspired me
Sometimes, as an artist, you are invited to explore unexpected subjects.
T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land is the inspiration behind my latest painting (above), which I have titled Under A Red Rock. I was invited to make the work for a new exhibition based on the poem. Several lines in the poem permeated into my imagination and informed the painting:
- I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
- There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
- “That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
“Has it begun to sprout?”
In October 1922, the inaugural edition of London’s literary magazine The Criterion arrived on the shelves. Inside was a new poem by a little known American poet, T. S. Eliot, and the poem was The Waste Land. It went on to become one of the most influential poems ever written in English.
T. S. Eliot said of the writing process that “a poet must be deliberately lazy. One should write as little as one possibly can. I always try to make the whole business seem as unimportant as I can.”
