Our final news roundup of the week looks at a GoFundMe appeal to renovate a poets house and the film Cats.

GoFundMe Campaign for Millay House Launches

Millay House Rockland has launched a GoFundMe in order to complete the renovation that it has planned to the double house it purchased in 2016. The property which is located at 198-200 Broadway is the property where Edna St. Vincent Millay the Pulitzer Prize poet was born.

The Rockland Historical Society, with the help of many supporters, was able to purchase the property in 2016. They have saved it from demolition and already done a considerable amount of work on the exterior to restore it. In 2017 they created Millay House Rockland, a not-for-profit literary organisation and the property was gifted to the new organisation.

Since 2017, both the electrical and heating systems have been replaced and the interiors of the property have been prepared for what will be the final phase of the restoration project. The plan is that everything will be renovated to be both historically accurate and comfortable – the eventual aim is that one side of the property will then be suitable for renting out. This will provide an income that will help to fund activities of a literary nature on the other side of the property, these activities will include workshops and plan to install a writer-in-residence.

In order to renovate the majority of the interior, Millay House Rockland will need to find $160,000. They are already in receipt of $56,000 in grants and have been promised $20,000 if they manage to get the amount raised to $100,000. They feel that the best way in which they can manage this is through a GoFundMe which they have recently set up.

Millay was born in Rockland and grew up in Camden and Union. She won a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the first woman to do so and is widely considered to be one of the most famous poets to have materialised during the first half of the last century.

Cats Poet Wouldn’t Have Minded Reviews

Last week saw the movie premiere in the UK of the film Cats, based on the works of the poet T. S Eliot.

Whilst the musical of the same name has been a success in theatres all over the world since it launched in 1980 the same can sadly not be said of the film. Whilst the cast list includes some very big names from the world of film, a ballerina and a couple of singers the reviews have mostly been less than kind.

According to the poet’s estate however, T.S Eliot would have taken the bad reviews in his stride and certainly had a sense of humour about the whole thing.

The late poet’s estate is in no way involved in the film adaptation of the poet”s work which appeared in the book The Old Possums Book of Practical Cats which he wrote for his godchildren.

Whether you love or hate the film, the work of T.S Eliot have once again become something of a talking point and this publicity has earned his estate over $100 million to date.