The tenth annual T. S. Eliot Lecture will be delivered by Colm Tóibín.

The evening will be introduced by the Abbey Theatre’s artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin, interspersed with readings by Cathy Belton, and followed by a conversation with James Shapiro, and marks 85 years since Eliot spoke at the Abbey Theatre to commemorate and celebrate W. B. Yeats on the first anniversary of his death.

This year’s lecture is entitled The Road to Little Gidding Yeats, Auden, Eliot 1939, 1940, 1941.

As war approached, the poets W.B. Yeats, W. H. Auden and T.S. Eliot explored systems of belief that were both traditional and esoteric. They looked inwards for images of unsettled consolation; they looked to the past, especially to the poet Dante, for inspiration. And, then, as Yeats died early in 1939, Eliot and Auden looked to Yeats and his achievement as an example or as a warning as they sought ways to approach modernity and tradition, violence and love, solitude and the life of the spirit.

Presented at the Abbey Theatre since 2016 and inspired by Eliot’s legacy and impact on modern literature, previous speakers include Paul Muldoon, Steven Pinker, Samantha Power, Sean Scully, Edna O’Brien, Es Devlin, Sally Rooney, Jeanette Winterson, and Ralph Fiennes.

#TSEliotLecture

Colm Tóibín 

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024. His most recent book, ‘Ship in Full Sail: The Laureate Lectures & Other Writings’, is published by Gallery Press.

James Shapiro 

James Shapiro who teaches English at Columbia University in New York, is author of several books, including 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (winner of the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize in 2006 and the Baillie Gifford ‘Winner of Winners’ in 2023), as well as Shakespeare in a Divided America.

Cathy Belton 

Cathy Belton’s screen credits include 2 seasons of Hidden Assets (RTE) for which she was nominated for an IFTA for Best Supporting Actor in 2022 and in 2024, The Catch, Miss Scarlet and The Hardacres, Philomena,

A Little Chaos and The Tiger’s Tail.  Her many theatre credits include most recently Reunion by Mark O’Rowe, and Mark O’Rowe’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts, also The Approach, Aristocrats, The Hanging Gardens, The House, John Gabriel Borkman, A View from the Bridge, Helen and I and Wonderful Tennessee. She debuted Frank McGuinness’s one-woman play The Match Box at Galway Arts Festival and was nominated for an Irish Times Best Actress Award.