Black Heathcliff and Heights Poetry

 A couple of alerts for today, April 23, in Haworth:

Thursday Talk: The Black Heathcliff

by  Corinne Fowler

Thu 23 Apr

2pm Brotnë Space at the Old School Room

7:30pm Zoom

This talk will be given by Professor Corinne Fowler, an author, public historian and co-curator of The Colonial Brontës exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in 2026. 

Corinne discusses Heathcliff's racial identity in Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. The talk will detail the colonial reading material which shaped Emily Brontë’s conception of Heathcliff's background and character before discussing references to Heathcliff's racial identity in the novel itself as well as in film versions of Wuthering Heights. The talk ends by focusing on the real-life historical presence of African people in the local area which spanned both Emily's lifetime and the period covered by the novel.  

'The Heights' Poetry Book Launch
Thu 23 Apr, 7:00pm

Old School Room

The history and landscape of Haworth continue to inspire many artists, writers and poets. We are delighted to host the launch of local poet Lydia Macpherson’s pamphlet The Heights (Calder Valley Poetry). Lydia now lives in the last inhabited house before Top Withens. Her five times great-grandfather Jonas Sunderland farmed Top Withens (widely believed to be the location for Wuthering Heights) during the lifetimes of the Brontës.  Her first collection, Love Me Do (Salt, 2014), won the Crashaw Prize. 

Lydia will be joined by special guest poets Clare Shaw and Alan Buckley. Clare’s poetry collections include Towards a General Theory of Love (Bloodaxe, 2022) which won a Northern Writers’ Award. Their poetry is anthologised in the National Trust’s Nature Poems (2023) and 100 Queer Poems (Vintage Penguin Random House 2022). Alan Buckley’s collections include Touched (HappenStance, 2020) and Still (Blue Diode Press, 2025). He is a founding member editor of ignitionpress and has taught creative writing to young people with both First Story and Arvon.