Kate Bush Pays a Second Tribute to Emily Brontë

Kate Bush is an English singer–songwriter, dancer, and producer. She pirouetted into our lives in 1978 when she was just 19 years old, topping the UK charts for four weeks with her self-written debut single Wuthering Heights (check out her video below). With that successful single Bush became the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a song she had written herself.

Wuthering Heights is based on the classic novel of the same, although Bush was actually inspired to write the song after watching a 1967 BBC mini-series adaptation of Emily Brontë. She was instantly hooked and straight away read the book, discovering that she shared her birthday (30th of July) with that particular Brontë. Serendipity!

This year, Kate Bush, along with other artists, has been commissioned to create another tribute to the Wuthering Heights author by providing words for a permanent art installation on the ‘wiley, windy moors‘ that inspired the famous tale.

Bush will join the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the Scottish makar (poet or bard) Jackie Kay, and the novelist Jeanette Winterson in a celebration of the Brontë sisters. All four artists/writers have been commissioned by Bradford Literature Festival to write poetry or prose which will be engraved on stones dotted along the eight-mile route between the sisters’ birthplace and the family church.

Winterson has been given the whole Brontë legacy, Duffy, Kay, and Bush have individual Brontë sisters to celebrate. The ‘Brontë stones’ project takes place in the 200th anniversary of Emily Brontë’s birth; additionally and most appropriately it is the 40th anniversary year of Bush’s Wuthering Heights hit song.

“Each sister being remembered by a stone in the enigmatic landscape where they lived and worked is a striking idea.

“Emily only wrote the one novel – an extraordinary work of art that has truly left its mark. To be asked to write a piece for Emily’s stone is an honour and, in a way, a chance to say thank you to her.”