A famous poet lived near here…

SMP supporter Hilary McDowell recalls her first encounters with Shelley and suggests that commemorating him will encourage other young writers.

I first remember hearing about Shelley from my parents. I must have been about eight.

We had moved to Horsham a couple of years before in 1966 and were in the car, somewhere near Warnham, before the days of the by-pass I think.

My father said that a famous poet had lived near there, did we know who, and I think my sister and I both came out with “Shelley”.  Does any one know his first name? was the next question – and I chimed in with “Percy”  - to my dad’s evident surprise. “How did you know that?” he asked – and I had no idea; I just knew. This was around the time I started writing my own early poems, always about nature, illustrated with wax crayons and spelling autumn with a “b” at the end.

Later, I came to know that he was one of the Romantic poets – my mother had studied them as part of her teacher training at Three Bridges, but I didn’t focus on them in my own literature degree; I was a Jamesian, besotted by the genius of the novel Henry James, whose house we had once seen on a family visit to Rye.

Shelley has always remained my first local poet, and after half a lifetime away from Horsham in Spain, Singapore and Sydney Australia I am again a Horsham local, a lecturer and a writer, convinced as Shelley was, that “the distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error”, an admirer of his essays as much as  of his poetry, and keen to help commemorate him in ways that encourage young Horsham writers.