Join us at the Center for Missouri Studies on November 3 for a centennial celebration of T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" with a new documentary. St. Louis native and international poet T. S. Eliot published his famous poem in October 1922. In partnership with University of Missouri, SHSMO is hosting a free film screening of T. S. Eliot: Into “The Waste Land” and an exhibit of creative works by Mizzou students.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Presentation on "The Waste Land" by Carissa Staples at 6:45 p.m. The documentary screening will begin promptly at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be provided.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY

A century after its first publication, “The Waste Land” yields up the buried life that led Eliot to compose his poem of personal anguish and alienation.

Filmmaker Susanna White, acclaimed for her documentary portraits and her literary adaptations of Bleak House and Jane Eyre, reveals new insights about the poet’s life, drawing from Eliot’s unpublished archive of over 1,000 secret letters to Emily Hale, an American drama teacher and his poetic muse. Artists and scholars explain the poem’s emotional origins and illuminate its obscurities, bringing this disturbing, epoch-setting poem to life for a new generation in an Oxford Films production for the BBC, produced by Rosie Alison.

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT

View creative writing, visual art, music, and other works by Mizzou students responding to “The Waste Land.”

Download the event flyer.