Modernist's material coming from the east (5)
I believe the answer is:
eliot
'modernist's' is the definition.
(TS Eliot was a modernist poet)
'material coming from the east' is the wordplay.
'material' becomes 'toile' (type of fabric).
'coming from the east' says the letters should be written backwards (letters written from right to left or east to west).
'toile' back-to-front is 'ELIOT'.
(Other definitions for eliot that I've seen before include "One of two writers" , "Practical Cats author" , "Middlemarch author" , "T.S. --, poet" , "T S . . . . . wrote ''The Waste Land''" .)