Waste Land

It looks like a room from the film ‘The Commitments’ but in it Fiona Shaw talks about and performs T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. As she performs the poem, you can follow the text which is highlighted in sync with the audio. Clicking on lines will earn you a repeat hearing/viewing, or you can navigate to other parts of the poem

It’s a wonderful demonstration of the possibilities of interaction between sound text and moving image.

But this is not all. You can hear other (but audio) versions of reading of the poem: two by T.S. Eliot himself, one by Viggo Mortensen, one by Alec Guinness, and another by Ted Hughes. Nimble finger work can get you versions of all of them in quick succession of the same line.

Also accompanied by videos of commentary by Seamus (‘the Famous’) Heaney, scholars, authors, and a young person with a tattoo – Frank Turner (er who?).

Fantastic first (as far as I am aware) serious scholarly entertaining app for the iPad. Congratulations to all at Faber and Faber and at Touch Press.