T.S. ELIOT FESTIVAL 2009

On Saturday, 27th June, we celebrated our fourth annual T.S. Eliot Festival at Little Gidding. We moved the date from May to June both in hope of having better weather, which we did, but, more importantly, to coincide with the first annual T.S. Eliot International Summer School, in London.

The Saturday started with an excellent overview of Eliot’s early letters which Professor Hugh Haughton, the speaker, had been involved in editing over the last few years. This was followed by a very spirited talk by Professor Park Honan, on the influence that the 2 Bradley and 2 James brothers had exerted to attract the young and unknown Eliot to England.

We had two musical offerings: in the afternoon Alexander Kershaw entertained us with a variety of contemporary music while in the evening the Rip Rap Collective, led by Malcolm Guite, featuring the poet Grevel Lindop, gave us a lively mix of poetry and music in the lovely setting of Steeple Gidding Church.

On sunday morning we were joined by nearly a hundred students and staff from the London Summer School. We were particularly pleased to have with us another first-rate biographer of Eliot, Lyndall Gordon, and the poet Seamus Heaney who, with Professor Robert Crawford of St. Andrew’s University, read the poem ‘Little Gidding’ beautifully. The main talk was given by the organiser of the School, Professor Ron Schuchard, another noted Eliot scholar, who spoke fluently about the importance of the Ferrar tradition for our age.

The wonderfully lively day closed with traditional Evensong in Little Gidding Church, led by the warden of Ferrar House, and enriched with beautiful singing from the Schola Cantorum group from Oundle School.

T.S. ELIOT FESTIVAL 2008

Poetry enthusiasts of T S Eliot from across the country gathered at the tiny hamlet of Little Gidding for the third annual T S Eliot Festival, held on Saturday 17 May 2008. The festival programme included inspiring talks and readings celebrating poetry and the work of T S Eliot.

The day's programme began with the annual Little Gidding Lecture, delivered by Peter Stanford, the authorised biographer of C Day-Lewis. Entitled 'On Not Saying Everything', the talk examined poetry's role in capturing religious experience. The festival's Keynote Speaker was Ingrid Soren, also known as Rosamond Richardson. Fresh from the International Symposium in Florence, Soren delivered her paper 'We Are Born With the Dead: A Conversation Between T S Eliot and Dante'. The day concluded with an evening reading by the distinguished poet Sean O'Brien, the recipient of both the 2007 T S Eliot Prize and the 2007 Forward Poetry Prize.