Nothing if not intrepid ( or foolhardy ) The Wasteland Revisited group have chosen the Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke as the challenge to follow their adventures with TS Eliot. We will be meeting monthly in The Secret Salon in the heart of Bath to discuss and share The Letters to a Young Poet, a series of group-chosen study texts, and poems selected particularly to generate ideas for our own new work .

Our first meeting will be on Friday 14th July. The chosen letter will be the one sent to Franz Xaver Kappus from Paris on 17th February 1903. Whenever did an aspiring novice writer receive better advice than this? The translation is by Charlie Louth.

Go into yourself. Examine the reason that bids you to write; check whether it reaches its roots into the deepest region of your heart … ask yourself in your night’s quietest hour: must I write? … Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if it should be affirmative … then construct your life according to this necessity; your life right into its most inconsequential and slightest hour must become a sign and witness of this urge.

Penguin Little Black Classics No. 103