A century later, it is being remembered as one of the great epic poems that marked the start of an epoch in the history of modern poetry.
To celebrate the milestone, University of Otago English and linguistics lecturer Dr Paul Tankard gave a public reading of the poem at Dunedin Public Library yesterday.
He said The Waste Land was important because it redefined what poetry was and what people expected from it.
"It changed people’s attitude to poetry. It was a revolutionary work in its time.
"It divided people - some people loved it and saw it as the poetry of the future.
"Other people were appalled by it and it was called rubbish and tripe.
"Someone said it was not so much a waste land as a waste of paper."
It was written in mid-1922, post World War 1, and contained five sections -The Burial of the Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death by Water and What the Thunder Said.
It presented a bleak picture of the landscape of the contemporary world and its history, and touched on Eliot’s anguish over what was happening to European culture.
"It’s about the chaos and sterility of contemporary society and culture, and of traditional literature and belief systems and social organisation falling into chaos."
While the poem was "complex and baffling", it was not incoherent, he said.
"It’s a poem that only ever hints and gestures at things. It’s a poem that you have to work at, it’s a poem that doesn’t explain itself."
Dr Tankard said he planned to continue giving public readings of the poem at various venues over the next three weeks.
