BRANWELL Brontë champion Simon Armitage is launching his latest batch of poetry in Haworth this month.

Leading British poet Armitage is this year’s creative partner with the Brontë Parsonage Museum in the year it celebrates the 200th anniversary of Branwell’s birth.

He will be at the Old School Room, next to the museum, on March 18 to read from his new anthology The Unaccompanied.

The 7.30pm event will also see Armitage in conversation.

In The Unaccompanied, Armitage gives a voice to the people of Britain with a haunting grace and his trademark eye for detail and biting wit.

Readers will meet characters whose sense of isolation is both emotional and political, both real and metaphorical.

There is a son made to groom the garden hedge as punishment, a nurse standing alone at a bus stop as the centuries pass by, and a latter-day Odysseus looking for enlightenment and hope in the shadowy underworld of a cut-price supermarket.

The event is the first in Haworth organised by Armitage in his role as creative partner following the launch of an exhibition Mansions in the Sky.

He created the year-long exhibition at the museum to mark the bicentenary of Branwell, notorious brother of famous writers Anne, Charlotte and Emily Brontë.

Visitors to the launch of The Unaccompanied can also attend an exclusive reception at the museum while viewing the exhibition.

Mansions in the Sky invites museum visitors into the mind and work of Branwell to discover exactly who he was.

The title is inspired by an early poem sent to William Wordsworth by the optimistic and precocious 20-year-old writer.

Armitage explores Branwell’s colourful personal history through his writings, drawings and possessions, displayed at the Parsonage alongside newly-created installations.

Highlights include a series of new poems by Armitage in response to Branwell’s belongings in the museum collection, and the actual letter and poem posted to Wordsworth.

There is also a life-size recreation of Branwell’s studio, designed in collaboration with the production team of the BBC biopic To Walk Invisible.

Simon Armitage has spoken of his interest in the “charismatic and complicated” Branwell.

He said: “As a poet of this landscape and region I recognise Branwell’s creative impulses and inspirations. I also sympathise with his desire to have his voice heard by the wider world.”

Tickets for the launch cost £10 for adults, £8 concessions and Brontë Society members, and £2 for 16 to 25 year olds.

Visit bronte.org.uk/whats-on or call 01535 640192 to book tickets.