OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
This lecture explores Eliot’s attachment to the language of liturgy, and examines the use he makes of words and rhythms from the Book of Common Prayer in three poems written around the time of his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism (The Hollow Men, A Song for Simeon and Ash-Wednesday). In the light of newly available materials from the Complete Prose and the Emily Hale Letters, the lecture looks at the intersections of poetry with prayer and blasphemy, and considers what happens when the language of liturgy meets the anxieties of modernist poetics.