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Faber is releasing its award-winning The Waste Land app for the first time on iPhone, to mark the centenary of T S Eliot’s poem.
The Waste Land app for iPad was first released 10 years ago, winning a prize at FutureBook alongside an International Interaction Design Award and achieving global press coverage, including the Times front page. In the poem’s centenary year the app has been redesigned for use on iPhones as well as updated for the latest generation of iPads. It is now available on the App Store.
The app offers a variety of features to help readers engage with the poem, including interactive notes, facsimile pages and readings synchronised to the text by Eliot himself, as well as Ted Hughes, Viggo Mortensen and others. It also hosts a filmed video performance of the entire poem by actor Fiona Shaw, directed by Adam Low.
Readers can watch more than 35 expert video perspectives on the poem, including contributions from Seamus Heaney and Jeanette Winterson. Reproductions of pages from the original manuscript illuminate how the poem took shape via handwritten editorial notes from Ezra Pound, a Modernist poet and mentor to Eliot.
The app release is part of a full programme of new projects marking the centenary. Other plans include a new recording of the poem by audiobook star Edoardo Ballerini, a new facsimile edition – published for the first time in colour – and September’s landmark publication of Matthew Hollis’ The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, a "riveting" piece of non-fiction reconstructing the genesis of the poem.
Sophie Clarke, business manager at Faber, said: "We’re delighted in this centenary year that more people than ever before can now explore The Waste Land in this truly innovative format. It’s Eliot for the digital age."
The Waste Land app is published jointly by Faber & Faber and The Red Green & Blue Co Ltd.