Finding Shelley
Pauline Howley explains why she joined the Shelley Memorial Project.
Shelley, that is Mary Shelley, was my first introduction to Shelley when I was 17. I had read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein several times, including the 1818 edition. I worked in an anatomy department at Kings College in London at the time, so the story of Frankenstein had a certain fascination. I liked the dark despair of it.
Then at a jumble sale I found an old edition of Percy Shelley’s poems. I knew nothing about him other than he was a poet married to Mary, but I liked the look of this old book with gold edged wafer thin paper, something from another time. I flicked through it and read small bits; different lines of the poems struck me.
My old boss, a prof at the anatomy department got me ‘The Pursuit’, a biography of Shelley. This book got me really exploring Shelley’s work. I wanted to know who this man was who sent messages of rebellion up in hot air balloons, who sent messages off in bottles across the sea, I knew he was someone on the outside, a rebel, I liked this.
Shelley opened the door to me to all the Romantic poets and I started studying other genres of poetry, poets and the times they lived in. Shelley’s poetry reflected the turbulent times he lived in, he saw poetry as a tool to really effect change in society. Shelley’s poems and essays are relevant today and continue to push the status quo.
Living in Horsham now, I got involved with the Shelley Memorial Project when I went to a poetry gig they had organised featuring the punk poet, Attila the Stockbroker. Being an old punk myself who loves poetry, I went along and found out about what the SMP is about. There I found fellow Shelley enthusiasts. I started to get more involved with the project because it would be good to have a memorial of Shelley in Horsham and it might help inspire and challenge others - as I have been challenged - by Percy Shelley’s work.
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar’’.
“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.’’
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays.
Pauline Howley