White Roses and Hamsters

Keighley News announces the first Poetry Festival at the Brontë Parsonage Museum:

A field behind the Brontë Parsonage Museum is the setting for Haworth's first-ever poetry festival.
Poetry at the Parsonage will bring dozens more than 100 poets and performers from across Yorkshire to Haworth on Saturday and Sunday, July 2 and 3.
The Word Club of Leeds has teamed up with the Brontë Society to organise a packed programme of readings and workshops.
The festival has been organised on behalf of the Brontë Parsonage Museum by Matthew Withey.
He said: “Poetry at the Parsonage will be the biggest gathering of poets anywhere in Britain this year.
“It is a free-to-enter festival with sets by more than 100 performers, all coming together on the edge of the moors that inspired some of the finest poetry in the English language.
“The weekend will be fabulous feast of words and we invite people to bring their families and share it with us.”
Helen Mort, one of the headliners, said events like the festival created a sense of community and encouraged poets to support one another.
“Yorkshire has a thriving poetry scene and it’s good to bring everyone together.”
Charlotte’s Stage, at the Old School Room next to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, will see performances by Mark Connors, Helen Mort and Alan Buckley on the Saturday, and Gaia Holmes, Clare Shaw, James Nash and Kate Fox on the Sunday.
The Saturday line-up for Emily’s Stage at nearby West Lane Baptist Centre includes Ilkley Young Writers and Lorna Faye Dunsire, who appeared as part of Charlotte’s bicentenary celebrations in Haworth in April.
Eddie Lawler, also known as the Bard of Saltaire, will headline Emily’s Stage on the Sunday. The event will be compered by Yorkshire favourites Craig Bradley, Geneviève L Walsh, Winston Plowes and Mark Connors of Word Club.
Performances will begin at noon each day. Visit bronte.org.uk/whats-on for further information and tickets. (David Knights)

Let's also congratulate the Parsonage for being one of the finalists in the White Rose Awards 2016:

Large Visitor Attraction
Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth
Cannon Hall Farm, Cawthorne
RSPB Bempton Cliffs
The Forbidden Corner, Coverham
The Wensleydale Creamery, Hawes
Tropical Butterfly House, Wildlife and Falconry Centre, Sheffield
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield

The Daily Mail interviews the actor Brian Blessed, a passionate Brontëite:

My favourite book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It has infinite depth and variety. (Jane Oddy)

Bustle wants to see more Shirleys being born:

 7. Shirley
As a child, I had a hamster named Shirley; my reasoning was that it just sounded nice. Like Clarence, "Shirley's" roots come from words for "bright" and "clear." It's also a gender crossover, turned female by an 1849 Charlotte Brontë novel by the same name. The late 1970s television series Laverne and Shirley didn't resuscitate the popularity of either name, but you sure can! (Pamela J. Hobart)

The Free Lance Star reviews The Lost Child by Caryl Phillips:

Don’t let the synopsis to “The Lost Child” dissuade you.
“A gripping and inventive reimagining of ‘Wuthering Heights’.”
Yuck.
It has been nearly 30 years since I read “Wuthering Heights” and the bits I remember from “Wuthering Heights” stem more from near-constant listening to the Kate Bush song of the same name in college than Emily Brontë’s classic. I liked the “Wuthering Heights,” but I don’t know that I would have dove into a “reimagining” at this point in life. Fortunately, I cracked “The Lost Child” and was engrossed before I flipped to the offending quote on the back cover.
“The Lost Child” touches upon Brontë’s Heathcliff as a child in bookend sections but they are not integral to the larger story that Phillips weaves about a mother’s descent into madness and the children who bear witness and are left to cope. Dangling the Wuthering Heights’ carrot is a misdirection that is not going to satisfy many readers—the fans or the haters. (Drew Gallagher)

 We rather think the opposite.

Vincennes Sun-Commercial has an article about the abuse of politically correctness in literature:

Among the many examples of this re-use, Jean Rhys would have been unable to write "The Wide Sargasso Sea" without Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre;" there could have been no "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" unless Jane Austen had created the original without the zombies; and Jane Smiley would hardly have been inspired to write "A Thousand Acres" without Shakespeare's "King Lear." (Annette McMullen)

 Le Huffington Post (France) talks about the work of the writer Dorothy Bussy:

Quant aux influences littéraires perceptibles dans Olivia, elles sont doubles. Le souvenir de Villette, le roman de Charlotte Brontë, est sensible partout dans le roman. Et pour approfondir le jeu de miroirs, rappelons que Villette est inspiré de l'amour déçu de Charlotte Brontë pour son professeur de français bruxellois, Constantin Heger. (Jeannine Hayat) (Translation)

La Nación (Argentina) interviews Mariana Enríquez about her new book, Las Cosas que Perdimos en el Fuego:

Muchos cuentos que escribo, además de los disparadores de las cuestiones reales que hablábamos, son a partir de indicios que cuando no son reales son literarios, y suelen ser alguna frase que me dispara algo. Que quizás no tiene que ver con el cuento, pero sí con la narrativa total que en ese momento estoy trabajando. Este libro lo abro con una frase de Emily Brontë en Cumbres borrascosas: "Desearía volver a ser niña, mitad salvaje y fuerte, y libre". Yo lo asociaba mucho a esa liviandad que tiene ser niño, con esa cosa silvestre y esa libertad que tienen los chicos a los que se les perdona todo, aunque puedan ser muy crueles, y es una maldad encantadora e irrecuperable. Hay un clima como de nostalgia de eso en los cuentos. (Sofía Almiroty) (Translation)

Parutions briefly talks about the recent Henri Dutilleux CD which includes the  Trois Tableaux Symphoniques 1946.