Press Release

A New Waste Land

Timeship Earth at Nillennium

by Michael Horovitz

Published on Saint William Blake’s 250^th birthday at the end of November 2007, by New Departures (www.poetryolympics.com)

Casebound Price £25 — ISBN 0-902689-26-6; 978-902689-26-8

Paperback Price £15 — ISBN 0-902689-18-5; 978-0-902689-18-3

464 Pages, 170mm x 240mm; Literature, Politics and Art

“It is an immensely powerful work bringing poetry and art together with passion and commitment in a Charge Sheet against certain people whose crimes you document so well. I have to try and keep my spirits up because without hope nothing can be achieved, but you certainly fire me up.” – Tony Benn

“A New Waste Land will be a priceless text, providing a treasure-trove of information about what’s really going on in the world today with the righteous anger of the undeluded and the still small voice of art.” – Ned Denny

“It is absolutely brilliant. It should be on the required reading list of all schools, colleges and universities, and copies put in all strategic offices of government.” – Ann Livingstone

Horovitz’s Magnum Opus

This lavish bran-tub of political deconstructions, cultural restorations and visual delights presents the fruit of ten years’ gestation by Michael Horovitz. As well as coinciding with Blake’s 250^th, its publication marks 85 years to the month since T S Eliot first published his ground-breaking The Waste Land, in the first issue of his magazine The Criterion in 1922.

The first 240 pages of A New Waste Land adapt Eliot’s poem as a template from which to scrutinise the planet at the turn of the 20^th-to-21^st Centuries. The second half of the book is made up of detailed analytic notes and polemics which challenge, amid much else, the duplicitous arms and war promotions of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Dubbya Bush.

The book also outlines the benefits an extended period out to pasture communing with Wordsworth’s daffodils might afford to Gordon Brown – and lights upon hitherto unsuspected aspects of Peter Mandelson glimpsed by Horovitz in a West London swimming pool.

About the Author

“Michael Horovitz is an original poet, with an original voice. He has always been an innovator, and is honoured as a free spirit and a creative force throughout the literary world . . . He has left an indelible mark on the course of British literature.” – Margaret Drabble

• “He sees the role of the poet as prophetic, as the voice of the conscience of a nation. He is a morally ‘engaged’ poet, and a trenchant critic of social corruption, not so much from a political standpoint but rather from the perspective of the ‘politics of eternity’ of William Blake . . .” – Kathleen Raine
• “Popular, experienced, experimental, New Jerusalem, Jazz Generation, Sensitive Bard . . .”– Allen Ginsberg
• “In addition to producing many notable poetic and musical works of his own, Michael Horovitz has worked tirelessly and selflessly over the past five decades to ensure an audience for his contemporaries . . . Michael sets a great example to us all and is a credit to the arts in this country. He’s lively, he keeps poetry accessible, and more than that . . . he’s a good laff!” – Paul McCartney
• On Friday 7^th December, from 6-8pm there will be a launch party at The Academy Club, 46 Lexington St, Soho, W1F 0LW (Pay Bar); on Sunday 9^th December, 7.30 till late, there will be a Jazz Poetry Party at Pentameters Theatre, The Horseshoes Pub, 28 Heath St, London NW3 6TE, near Hampstead tube stn (£8/£5, Box Office 020 7435 3648) – featuring, among other alumni, Bernard Kops, Fran Landesman, Liliane Lijn, Michele Roberts, Ron Rubin, Madeline Solomon and MH. And on Thursday 13^th December, from 7pm, Muswell Hill Bookshop, 72 Fortis Green Road, London N10 3HN hosts A New Waste Land reading/signing party (Free Admission, 020 8444 7588).
• See also www.poetryolympics.com

Illustrators

A New Waste Land projects a kaleidoscope of telling photographs by many talented hands; images from a cornucopia of artists including Bosch, Michelangelo, Brueghel, El Greco, van Gogh, Picasso and Hockney; and cartoons by Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, Nicholas Garland, Michael Heath, Andrzej Krauze, Chris Riddell, Gerald Scarfe, Posy Simmonds, Trog and their peers, at the top of their form.

Distributor and Contact

All New Departures and Poetry Olympics publications and recordings are distributed by Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LM – tel 0845 458 9911 – orders@cen tralbooks.com – www.centralbooks.com

• Michael Horovitz is available for interview or comment. For further information, or to request an advance copy for review or feature, please contact via (tel-fax-ans) 020 7229 7850 – or email info@poetryolympics.com