Phil Gillam: Why Mary Webb still matters in the present tense

So wrote the great Mary Webb, the Shropshire novelist and poet who described Shrewsbury as "my own town" and referred to it often, renaming it Silverton in her literary works.

This week marks the anniversary of Webb's birth (she was born March 25, 1881) - and her life and work is being celebrated at this year's Wenlock Poetry Festival.

This exquisite writer lived for only 46 years, and was afflicted with incurable Graves' Disease. She is buried in Shrewsbury Cemetery.

Of course she was only partially right in saying "We are tomorrow's past" because Mary lives on today (and will live on tomorrow) thanks to her wonderful legacy: her highly-respected and much-loved novels, nature essays and poetry.

These works were all best-selling books in the decade before the Second World War and have all placed Shropshire firmly on the literary map of Britain. Today, she is as important to Shropshire as Thomas Hardy is to Dorset and the Brontes are to the West Yorkshire moors.

It is why the sixth annual Wenlock Poetry Festival is paying tribute to her poetry through a series of events and performances by the poets Gladys Mary Coles and Much Wenlock's Paul Evans who are both tremendously inspired by her work.

For fans of Mary Webb, this year's Wenlock Festival promises to be a real treat.

Paul Evans will deliver the Festival Lecture on Saturday, April 25, and then Gladys Mary will present a Celebratory Reading of the Poetry of Mary Webb on Sunday, April 26, 12.30pm-1.30pm, followed by a poetry workshop from 3pm-5pm.

Tickets are available from www.wenlockpoetryfestival.org or from the box office at Shrewsbury Tourist Information: 01743 258888.

Gladys Mary Coles is the world authority on Mary Webb and has published extensively on her work throughout her own career as both poet and academic.

"Mary Webb's evocation of Shropshire in her poetry is unsurpassed in its accuracy and powerful sense of place," says Gladys Mary. "Her lucid imagery and exact detail of the natural world are drawn from her intimate, intense relationship with the Shropshire countryside - a lifelong passion owing much to the 14 deeply-formative years of her childhood beneath Wenlock Edge. Here she was immersed in the wonders of nature. Here she was inspired to write her earliest poems and stories."

Paul Evans, who will be delivering this year's Festival Lecture - 'Betwixt and Between – the mystic ecology of Mary Webb' - is equally transfixed: "Mary Webb's poetry is a gentle act of resistance to forces ranged against Nature and the human spirit," he said.

Talking of Webb's love for Shrewsbury, Gladys Mary Coles says: "For Mary Webb, Shrewsbury was 'My Own Town', and she wrote about it in her poems and novels, in which she renamed it 'Silverton'. Before her marriage to Henry Webb in 1912, she lived in Meole Brace with her family, the Merediths.

"She was a great reader and borrowed books from Shrewsbury Library several times a week. With her father she attended concerts in the Lion Hotel, and every year enjoyed Shrewsbury Flower Show. Holy Trinity Church was important in the lives of the Merediths. Mary held a Sunday School there, and was married in the church (a brass plaque marks the pew where she used to sit)."