The Wasted Land

Author: Cait O'Kane

Publisher: Tripwire (2025)

This documentary poem by Cait O’Kane is modeled after T.S. Eliot’s epic poem The Waste Land. It serves as a textual map of graffiti, narcotics, blight, & gentrification in the “changing neighborhood” of Kensington, Philadelphia. Once a working-class enclave, this section of Philly has been portrayed internationally as the epicenter of the so-called “opioid epidemic” enveloping the U$A. Punctuated by O’Kane’s photography, The Wasted Land moves through Kensington’s streets, avenues, & alleys, exploring intersections of capital, dispossession, development, & despair as the true epidemic plaguing its people.