Press Release 

A New Waste Land

Timeship Earth at Nillennium 

By Michael Horovitz 

Published by New Departures in late Autumn 2007  

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.

      The first 240 pages adapt The Waste Land of T S Eliot as a template from which to scrutinise the planet at the turn of the 20th-to-21st Centuries. The second part 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 National Poetry Day, Thursday 4th October, Horovitz will be reading, singing from and discussing the book at London’s National Portrait Gallery from 1.15 to 2pm (free admission); and on the evening of the same day, he will be presenting his annual Jazz Poetry SuperJam at the 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, London W1, from 7.30pm till late, featuring – among other comrades – Adrian Mitchell, Fran Landesman, Mahmood Jamal and Adam Horovitz, with Wally Fawkes’ and Martin Davison’s clarinets, Clark Tracey and Rocco Webb on drums, Madeline Solomon on flute and vocals, Joe Paice and Neil Cowley at the piano, and the William Blake Klezmatrix band (£10, Concessionaries £7.50, at the door 7.30pm).

    * 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 

All New Departures/Poetry Olympics Publications and recordings are distributed by Cenbtral Books, 199 Wallis Road, London E9 5LM; orders@centralbooks.com – www.centralbooks.com – tel 0845 458 9911.  

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