2028 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of John Masefield in Ledbury. In the early twentieth-century Masefield was a best-selling author and he was appointed Poet Laureate in 1930. His inspirational life and work have now faded from view and a Ledbury-based project, Masefield Matters, will rectify this.
Through a programme of activities the local community will have the opportunity to reconnect with Masefield by exploring the things that mattered to him, including the countryside and the sea. These activities will help to determine the form of the ultimate memorialisation.
The two-year project has been awarded £220,000 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery players. It will be launched on Wednesday 15 January, 3 – 5pm at The Master’s House in Ledbury. Anyone interested is invited to attend to find out more about plans, and how they can be involved.
Many writers recognised Masefield’s gifts: Yeats said he would be “a popular poet”, Eliot identified his “importance”, Larkin “admired” him, and Betjeman wrote that Masefield’s poems ‘Sea-Fever’ and ‘Cargoes’ would be “remembered as long as the language lasts”. Once proposed as the twentieth-century’s “greatest man” (over Churchill, Roosevelt and Gandhi), Masefield is now largely forgotten.
