Poetry Day poems

This poem uses phrases and lines written by visitors at the Bronte Parsonage Museum to celebrate National Poetry Day 2009, based on words chosen from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. One or two of the phrases have been lightly edited. My thanks to everyone who participated - Katrina

Found Poem

From a stone-dark churchyard,
from this humiliation window,
the moors sobbed,
the devil struck and laughed.

Heathcliff kisses Cathy,
who is the servant or master?
Her mute gaze is mine:
master, stagger my love.

Rain and snow kisses your face,
my heart is willingly the servant.
Small dream, dare to dream,
let good hearts hope:

pocket my heaven,
my key is love and light.

Katrina Naomi

Katrina Naomi and National Poetry Day

The Parsonage is very delighted to welcome Katrina Naomi as our first Writer in Residence. She will be visiting the museum over the next few months and working with the collections, staff, visitors and community groups to create her own new work in response to the Parsonage but also to inspire others in different ways to start writing. Her first event takes place at the museum today, where she is inviting visitors to follow a poetry trail in the museum and write responses to questions along the route. In the exhibition room, visitors are invited to join in some 'Bronte fridge magnet poetry' - words taken from Wuthering Heights are turned in to new abstract lines, as silly or serious as people wish...

To those of you who joined in today, thank you, and you'll be able to follow the progress of Katrina's residency on this site, and perhaps see some of your own lines take shape in her poetry too! Some of the lines from the day will be posted up soon.

About Katrina:
Katrina Naomi is originally from Margate and now lives in London. Her first full collection, The Girl With the Cactus Handshake, will be published in October 2009. She won the 2008 Templar Poetry Competition and her pamphlet Lunch at the Elephant and Castle was published later that year. She has received an Arts Council England writer's award and a Hawthornden Fellowship, and has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths. Katrina is also a lecturer in creative writing for the Open University.