A CHANCE encounter in Ledbury with one of the “neglected masters” of American poetry led to a film which will receive its premiere at this year’s Ledbury poetry festival.

Life is Immense: Visiting Samuel Menashe will be screened and introduced by filmmaker Pamela Robertson-Pearce at the Market Theatre on Tuesday, July 7.

The film’s origins come from last year’s festival when Menashe was invited to travel from his tiny apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village to perform in Ledbury.

It was there he bumped into Pamela at a Sunday lunch thrown by festival organisers Peter and Diana Carter and quickly charmed her by off-the-cuff recitations of his work. She immediately thought he’d make a wonderful subject for a film. Samuel Menashe was making his only visit to England in many years.

He was first published here in 1961, before he had achieved any recognition in America, where he remained a marginal figure over five decades until becoming the first winner of the Poetry Foundation’s $50,000 Neglected Masters Award in 2004.

Pamela Robertson-Pearce and poetry publisher Neil Astley, of Bloodaxe Books, travelled to New York just two months later and filmed Menashe reciting 150 poems from memory in the course of a five-hour visit. After a marathon editing job, Pamela edited Menashe’s non-stop stream of poetry and conversation down to an hour-long film, in which 40 poems survive.

Life is Immense: Visiting Samuel Menashe will begin at 5.30pm.