Thomas Sterns Eliot, better known as T.S. Eliot, was a poet and playwright. He’s best known today for “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” which inspired the musical “Cats“. But a lot of Eliot’s work, was a far cry from this light and whimsical set of verses.
And although he was American, his family had roots in England and he ended up becoming a British citizen, which is why he’s now buried in St Micheal and All Angels Church in East Coker, Somerset.
TS Eliot was born in St Louis on the 26 September 1888. A medical condition as a child meant he struggled with physical activities and so he found solace and adventure in books. He began writing poetry around the age of 14 – gloomy poems that he ended up destroying – and first published a poem in 1905.
Eliot studied English at Harvard and it was here he was introduced and influenced by the Symbolist Movement. He attended Merton College, Oxford during the First World War, but ended up leaving after a year to teach English at the University of London. London was a much better fit for him and where he meet the American poet Ezra Pound.
It was Pound who recommended that the “Poetry” magazine, should publish Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. And he helped Eliot further by publishing “The Waste Land” in 1922 and “The Hollow Men” in 1925.
Around this time he met his first wife Vivienne Haigh-Wood, but the marriage was not happy, plagued by physical, mental issues and substance abuse on both sides. The couple separated and Vivienne was later confined to a mental institution where she died in 1947.
Eliot became a director in Faber and Gwyer publishing, responsible for publishing people like W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes and Stephen Spender. In 1927 he became a British Citizen and in 1957 he married his secretary, Esme Fletcher, who was nearly 40 years younger than him.
After he died at the age of 76, he was cremated and his ashes interred in St Micheal and All Angels Church in East Coker. Eliot himself, actually wrote a poem called “East Coker” and his memorial plaque includes a line from it; “In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning”.
A lot of Eliot’s poems are meditative and brooding, and yet it is the light verse of Cats that he is most well-known by many – including me. Researching this has made me far more aware of his other work, which I’ll probably take more of a look at.
East Coker is a very nice little village, with a great pub that we got lunch at during this village, so if you’re in the area that’s worth a look too.
What do you think? Do you like T.S. Eliot’s poems? Let me know in the comments.
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