Norwich is a pretty, provincial city in the beautiful county of Norfolk in East Anglia. It is known for its cathedral, its university and its football team, but it‘s not normally seen as a literary place. And yet it became England’s first UNESCO City of Literature.
This was thanks to lobbying by the city’s Writers’ Centre, as the organisation’s chief executive, Chris Gribble, explains:
Chris Gribble (Standard English/Newcastle accent): I looked at Norwich’s story and we have an amazing kind of record of literary firsts and, you know, Julian of Norwich was the first woman to be published in book form in English, we had the start of blank verse in the 17th century, we had England’s only medieval Hebrew poet in the city in the 13th century, we had the first provincial newspaper founded here, the first city to sign the Libraries Act in the 1800s, the first city-established public library outside of London. This incredible evidence of commitment to writing and reading as a form of positive social change: Harriet Martineau, who was a campaigner, one of the first campaigning female journalists and the founder of sociology. We had Thomas Paine, who was from just outside Norwich, whose magnificent kind of philosophical treatise kind of pushed those boulders over the cliff that ended up in that avalanche which swept away slavery and founded the American Constitution.
creative writing
And he admits that the city’s literary past is not common knowledge:
Chris Gribble: Well, I thought, “Well, that’s quite an extraordinary story for a city, really,” and it’s not very well known, and I thought, “Well, we can take that through to the present time,” with the very first MA in creative writing in this country being set up at UEA (The University of East Anglia) in 1971: the very first graduate was Ian McEwan. The British Centre for Literary Translation, with (which) Max Sebald founded, as (the) primary home for literary translation in the country, and one of the best centres in the world for that.
the modern economy
And Chris Gribble feels that literature still has a very important role to play in today’s society:
Chris Gribble: Without really competent readers and writers amongst our population, we are at a massive economic disadvantage, when we look at the weight of graduates coming through the new economies in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the levels of literacy that are coming through there, and the competitive nature of the job market. If you can’t read and write well, you’re at a disadvantage, and, to be quite frank, the very best way to be able to read and write well is to enjoy it. And that’s part of the City of Literature process, is about sharing our stories and understanding that the only way we can influence where we are going in future is by understanding and listening to those stories around us and of the past and, as an art form, all of the arts and culture, in fact, if you ignore that power, or if you underestimate it and stop all investment in it, then everyone loses out effectively, and we’re quite committed to making sure that doesn’t happen!
Per saperne di più: Norwich: The City of Literature