Our final poetry news looks at the house that inspired the Bronte sisters, Kooser stepping down from his poetry column and the poetry inspired calligraphy mural.

House with Links to Emily Bronte to be Sold

Ponden Hall in Stansbury, West Yorkshire has gone up for sale with a price tag of over £1m. The building is frequently identified as the Linton’s house Thrushcross Grange in the Emily Bronte classic Wuthering Heights. It is also believed that Ponden Hall may also have inspired Anne Bronte when she was writing The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

The house dates as far back as 1541, and was visited by the Bronte family during Emily’s childhood. It is suggested that several features specific to the property may have inspired her work. The house was converted into a bed and breakfast in 2014.

The sisters began writing when they were just children, as did their other sister Charlotte. They first visited the house in September 1824 during the Crow Hill Bog Burst. This was a mudslide that occurred after very heavy rainfall in the area.

This was a building that they were to visit often, and the house clearly had a lasting effect on them. Considered one of the finest in West Yorkshire, the library at Ponden House with its William Shakespeare first portfolio was very popular with all three sisters.

The current owners have lived in the property since 1998 and have carried out very extensive restoration work during their time in the Grade II listed building.

Kooser Steps Down From “American Life in Poetry”

Ted Kooser has been at the helm for over 15 years but now he has announced that he will be stepping down as editor of “American Life in Poetry”, the national column which he founded. He has named his successor as Kwame Dawes.

The announcement was made in his 805^th column in which he featured Red Stilts, a poem from his upcoming book. His very last column will run on 29^th December.

The column was launched by Kooser in 2005 during his tenure as the US poet laureate. He had one goal in mind, and that was to put poetry back into the news and give more readers a chance to experience it. The project had the support of the United States Library of Congress, the Poetry Foundation, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Department of English.

It was very popular from the very beginning, and it didn’t take long before both the online and print copies had over a million readers. Now American Life in Poetry is enjoyed by an estimated 4.6 million readers on a global scale.

Calligraphy Mural Pays Tribute to Hafez

Seb Lester, one of the most well-known calligraphers in the world, has created a mural inspired by the Persian poet Hafez. The mural is titled “I Wish”

He likes to find inspiration in unusual places. This time he found the inspiration in the words written by Hafez (Hafiz) during the Middle Ages. The mural has been produced as part of the London Mural Festival which will be taking part for the month of September. There are also 2 limited prints of the calligraphy available which will be numbered and signed.