Dead Poets Live

Dead Poets Live Bringing new life to great poets. Devised and supported by the T. S.

Eliot Foundation.

'To have great poets', Walt Whitman said, 'there must be great audiences’: but to have great audiences, there must be great occasions. DEAD POETS LIVE is a series of events, conceived in the hope that old poets enjoy new life – on the stage, in the mouths of today’s actors and poets.

Poetry interrupted.
03/05/2026

Poetry interrupted.

A. E. Housman died in 1936.
30/04/2026

A. E. Housman died in 1936.

Booking now open! 💌Dead Poets Live return to to present one of the great achievements of 20th-century poetry:Briggflatt...
27/04/2026

Booking now open! 💌

Dead Poets Live return to to present one of the great achievements of 20th-century poetry:
Briggflatts.

In 1964, Basil Bunting, as old as the century, was living near Newcastle in grinding poverty and obscurity, an extinguished star of the Modernist era who’d barely written a poem in 30 years, now working as a sub-editor on a local paper. What happened next is one of the great stories, and achievements, of English literature: the poem that Bunting set himself to make, Briggflatts, has been compared favourably to Eliot’s The Waste Land and Pound’s Cantos by the poet Thom Gunn, among others. ad Poets Live’s new show weaves together the story of Bunting’s astonishing life and the poem he wrote in response to it, presenting the work in full.

Above all, Briggflatts is a poem whose author intended it to be experienced in performance; to be heard by a live audience. Simon McBurney, one of Britain’s most respected actors and theatre-makers, will explore Bunting’s life and perform, sixty years after its first publication, one of the greatest - and most unjustly neglected — poetic accomplishments in English.

Tickets on our website via link in bio, or thecoronettheatre.com!

Booking now open! 💌Dead Poets Live return to to present one of the great achievements of 20th-century poetry: Briggflat...
27/04/2026

Booking now open! 💌

Dead Poets Live return to to present one of the great achievements of 20th-century poetry: Briggflatts.

In 1964, Basil Bunting, as old as the century, was living near Newcastle in grinding poverty and obscurity, an extinguished star of the Modernist era who’d barely written a poem in 30 years, now working as a sub-editor on a local paper. What happened next is one of the great stories, and achievements, of English literature: the poem that Bunting set himself to make, Briggflatts, has been compared favourably to Eliot’s The Waste Land and Pound’s Cantos by the poet Thom Gunn, among others.
ad Poets Live’s new show weaves together the story of Bunting’s astonishing life and the poem he wrote in response to it, presenting the work in full.

Above all, Briggflatts is a poem whose author intended it to be experienced in performance; to be heard by a live audience. Simon McBurney, one of Britain’s most respected actors and theatre-makers, will explore Bunting’s life and perform, sixty years after its first publication, one of the greatest — and most unjustly neglected — poetic accomplishments in English.

Tickets on our website via link in bio, or thecoronettheatre.com!

In an unpublished piece, Eliot describes relinquishing authorial control throughout the filming of George Hoellering’s a...
25/04/2026

In an unpublished piece, Eliot describes relinquishing authorial control throughout the filming of George Hoellering’s adaptation of Murder in the Cathedral (originally published by Eliot in 1935).

Here, he details the process of recording the whole verse drama in order to preserve pronunciation in the film. However, to what extent can a poet control how their verse is performed when refracted through the voice of an actor?

Happy Earth Day 🌍
22/04/2026

Happy Earth Day 🌍

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land opens with a subversion of the first few lines of The Canterbury Tales’ General Prologue: ‘...
19/04/2026

T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land opens with a subversion of the first few lines of The Canterbury Tales’ General Prologue:

‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,’

Haiku (or hokku):‘A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven...
17/04/2026

Haiku (or hokku):

‘A Japanese verse form most often composed, in English versions, of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. A haiku often features an image, or a pair of images, meant to depict the essence of a specific moment in time.‘

— Poetry Foundation.

Happy National Haiku Poetry Day!

‘And blessed mornings,/ Meet for the eye of the young alligator,’Wallace Stevens, ‘Nomad Exquisite’.
14/04/2026

‘And blessed mornings,/ Meet for the eye of the young alligator,’

Wallace Stevens, ‘Nomad Exquisite’.

Starring Patsy Ferran, Dead Poets Live’s Emily Dickinson returned to The Coronet Theatre in March 2026.
11/04/2026

Starring Patsy Ferran, Dead Poets Live’s Emily Dickinson returned to The Coronet Theatre in March 2026.

Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Mrs Darwin’
07/04/2026

Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Mrs Darwin’

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