Like Literary Landmarks? Help Save Ruth Stone's House!

So they tell us: The Ruth Stone Foundation needs your help to save a historical literary landmark! One Sharon Olds can't be wrong: “When you were there you felt yourself to be in the heart of the poetry family."

When the late poet, Ruth Stone, received the Shelley Award for poetry in 1953, she was able to purchase her farmhouse in Goshen, Vermont. Widowed, mother of three, Ruth made a living through poetry, struggle though it was. And Goshen was the rock that kept the everything together; a haven of poetry, art, music, and community. The house was bought, repaired, and held up with poetry.

Ruth Stone’s home fallen into grave disrepair. The Ruth Stone Foundation needs your help to make critical, immediate repairs to stabilize the house and keep it from further damage, so that we might continue our work to make this a landmark to Ruth Stone, and intimate writer’s retreat.

We know how hard Ruth's granddaughter--poet and artist Bianca Stone--has been working to set up the house and retreat. We'd be remiss to not point you toward donating some tax-deductible change!

A Breakdown of The Situation

There are two 1800's houses on the land: a main house, a very old (two-story) one room house, and well as a small chapel built by Ruth Stone's family in the 1970’s. The houses have all stood unprotected and ignored for years, and it wasn’t until after Ruth Stone’s death in 2011 that their problems began to be seriously addressed. While dedicated to the restoration of this property, we do not have the funding to go forward with saving it.

We’ve used money we raised in 2013 to work closely with professional architects to assess the amount of damage done, through detailed descriptions and "existing condition" architectural drawings. The estimates of the overall cost to make this a fully functional community space are well over 700,000 dollars. However, we’re asking for 25,000 to stabilize the house and attend to immediate needs so that it doesn’t get any worse than it already is.

We have been working tirelessly with volunteers over the past two years to rescue the contents of the house. This is very delicate work, because so much has been damaged, and is very important to the historical literary aspect of the house.

For more about Ruth herself and all of these endeavors, please visit ruthstonefoundation.org.