Event to celebrate T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk

T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk, a Mecosta, Michigan, author are the focus of an event at Grand Valley State University that celebrates their work and their friendship, and the reprinting of the book that links them.

Once credited as the “prophet of American conservatism” by Ronald Reagan, Kirk was named Michigan’s Greatest Man of Letters by the Michigan Legislature in 1994, the year of his death. Among the 32 books he wrote was “Eliot and His Age: T.S. Eliot’s Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century.”

The event on Thursday, August 14, from 6-8 p.m. in Loosemore Auditorium, DeVos Center, on the Pew Grand Rapids Campus, will be an evening of reflection, reminiscence and images celebrating the reprint of Kirk's book.

Special guest speakers include Annette Kirk, founder and president of the Russell Kirk Center in Mecosta, and Grand Valley Professor of English Ben Lockerd, past president of the T.S. Eliot Society, who wrote the introduction to the new edition of Kirk’s book. David Huisman, Grand Valley Professor Emeritus of English and past secretary of the T. S. Eliot Society, will give a photographic presentation,"'If You Came This Way': Landscapes of the Heart in Four Quartets," exploring the places Eliot wrote about in his poem Four Quartets.

“West Michigan has an unusually high concentration of Eliot scholars at various universities—including Calvin, Cornerstone, Hope, and GVSU--yet this program is designed for anyone interested in his work, especially in respect to his association with Russell Kirk,” said Lockerd.

Open to the public with free admission, the lecture is part of a three-day conference on T.S. Eliot sponsored by Grand Valley State University and The Russell Kirk Center. The conference will also focus on Eliot’s Anglo-Catholic faith and its influence on his poetry, plays, and cultural criticism. For more information contact Ben Lockerd at [email protected], or call (616) 331-3575.