Celebrating a Great Radical Poet

Written By Clay F. Johnson

By The Shelley Memorial Project
8 July 2022

In 2019, to mark the 200th anniversary of the massacre in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, the publisher Redwords produced a second edition of ‘Shelley’s Revolutionary Year: The Peterloo writings of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,’ a volume that included one of Shelley’s best-known poems, The Masque of Anarchy.  In his introduction to this edition, Paul O’Brien describes the Masque of Anarchy as one of the greatest political poems in the English language and it is without doubt the work that has sealed Shelley’s reputation as one of our greatest radical poets. The 2019 anniversary provided an opportunity to celebrate Shelley’s radical writings, a body of work that has inspired radical movements and campaigners down the centuries and across the globe, including the Chartists’ and Owenites.  Karl Marx and Ghandi are said to be amongst the poet’s admirers. Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution references the most famous lines from the Masque of Anarchy and in 2017, the then Party Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, famously used those lines as a rallying call to activists at the Glastonbury Festival.

 

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.

 

Paul Foot, the radical and investigative journalist, was also a great admirer of Shelley. He wrote an excellent introduction to the first edition of ‘Shelley’s Revolutionary Year,’ and in a lecture in 1981, explained why he found Shelley’s work so inspirational. ‘(It) is his enthusiasm for the idea that the world can be changed. It shapes all his poetry. ... He believed in life and he really felt that life is what mattered, that life could and should be better than it is. Could and should be changed.’   

 

Such was the extent of Paul Foot’s admiration for Shelley, that he played a key role in a campaign for a public memorial to commemorate the poet.  The outcome of that campaign was the installation of a public artwork in Horsham, West Sussex, the town closest to Shelley’s family home and birth place and where he spent his early years. In 1996, Paul Foot was invited by Horsham Council to unveil the sculpture, a large. kinetic water sculpture, entitled ‘The Rising Universe’.   Paul’s view of the artwork is not recorded, but from the moment of its installation the sculpture met with a mixed reaction. Some thought it was ugly and failed to see clearly the connection with the poet, this was understandable as it was not specially commissioned to commemorate Shelley but purchased ‘off-the-shelf’ by Horsham District Council who seemed to think this was the closest they could get to something serving that purpose.  Others were more appreciative of the artwork but were unhappy with the frequency with which the mechanism that kept it in working order seemed to break down.  The artwork was eventually dismantled by the council as it became too expensive to maintain.  This was massively disappointing to a huge number of admirers of Shelley’s work, as the long campaigned for public memorial to a towering literary figure, and arguably the only public memorial to Shelley in the country, was removed with no clear plans to provide a replacement.

 

In 2022 there is another opportunity for admirers of his work to reflect on Shelley’s place as a great radical poet and thinker, and, as a recent revival of interest in the Romantics has acknowledged, one of the greatest poets in the English Language.  The 8th July 2022 marks the bicentenary of Shelley’s death.

 

The Shelley Memorial Project has identified this significant anniversary as an opportunity to revisit Paul Foot’s vision of a permanent public memorial to the great poet.  The Project has been formed by individuals and community groups based in Horsham who have an interest in the work of the internationally renowned writer and his connection with the town.  The Project’s objective is to commission an artwork that clearly relates to and commemorates the significant contribution that Percy Bysshe Shelley made, not only to literature, but to political and social philosophy.  The intention of the Project is to ensure that this public artwork will commemorate Shelley’s achievements in a way that will provide enjoyment and inspiration to residents and visitors to Horsham, and particularly to young people. Shelley tragically died before he reached his thirtieth birthday, but in his short life-time he produced poetry and prose that has been described as providing a magnificent representation of the energy and curiosity of youth. That work remains capable of inspiring, influencing and delighting today.   

 

Alongside the debate that has taken place in recent years about the appropriateness and purpose of memorials and monuments to individuals, there is a growing interest in acknowledging, through memorials, positive actions and ideas.  As Paul O’Brien put it, ‘Shelley has bequeathed us a body of work and access to a language that can inspire and energise people to organise and agitate for a better world’.  That has  surely to be a body of work that deserves commemoration. 

 

 If you would like to support the Project’s aim of delivering a permanent public memorial to the great radical poet, you can support the fundraising campaign by:

Clay F. Johnson
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