Margate to mark centenary of TS Eliot's The Waste Land
In a seaside shelter at Margate in 1921, TS Eliot wrote the lines: "On Margate Sands./I can connect/Nothing with nothing./The broken fingernails of dirty hands./My people humble people who expect/Nothing."
He was recovering from a nervous breakdown. The lines come from Part III of The Waste Land. Now the Margate Bookie literary festival, in conjunction with Vanguard Readings, plans to mark the centenary of The Waste Land’s publication with a live reading of the whole poem by Faber poets David Harsent, Richard Scott, and Hannah Sullivan. The event is planned for Sunday 5 June.