Charlotte, by Carol Anne Duffy
(The first two stanzas don’t appear on the stone)

Walking the parlour, round round round the table,
miles; dead sisters stragglers till ghosts; retired wretch,
runty, pale, plain C. Brontë; mouth skewed, tooth-rot.
You see you have prayed to stone; unheard, thwarted.

But would yank your heart through your frock,
fling it as a hawk over the moors, flaysome.
So the tiny handwriting of your mind as you pace.
So not female not male like the wind’s voice.

The vice of this place clamps you; daughter; father
who will not see thee wed, traipsing your cold circles
between needlework, bed, sleep’s double-lock.
Mother and siblings, vile knot under the flagstones, biding.

But the prose seethes, will not let you be, be thus;
bog-burst of pain, fame, love, unluck. True; enough.
So your still doll-steps in the dollshouse parsonage.
So your writer’s hand the hand of a god rending the roof.

The Brontës, by Jeanette Winterson

BRONTESAURUS
Fossil record of a miracle
Bone by Bone
Word for Word
Three Women writing the Past into the Future
Line by Line
Listen to the Wildfell of your heart
Do not betray what you love
The earth opens like a book
You are come back to me then?
BRONTISSIMO

Emily, by Kate Bush

She stands outside
A book in her hands
‘Her name is Cathy,’ she says
‘I have carried her so far, so far
Along the unmarked road from our graves
I cannot reach this window
Open it, I pray.’
But his window is a door to a lonely world
That longs to play.
Ah Emily. Come in, come in and stay.

Anne, by Jackie Kay

These dark sober clothes
are my disguise. No, I was not preparing
for an early death, yours or mine.
You got me all wrong, all the time.
But sisters, I’ll have the last word,
write the last line. I am still at sea -
but if I can do some good in this world,
I will right the wrong. I am still young,
and the moor’s winds lift my light-dark hair.
I am still here when the sun goes up,
and here when the moon drops down.
I do not now stand alone.