Loxley, James

Thomson, Tara

English

This interview explores the rationale and plans for the creation of a Literature House in Edinburgh, which was the first location to be designated a UNESCO World City of Literature and is seeking to find the best ways to curate and promote its literary past and present in order to foster its future

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     Edinburgh Research Explorer                                      Interview - A literature house for EdinburghCitation for published version:Loxley, J & Thomson, T 2023, 'Interview - A literature house for Edinburgh', Angles - New Perspectives onthe Anglophone World, vol. 16. <https://journals.openedition.org/angles/6921>Link:Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research ExplorerDocument Version:Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordPublished In:Angles - New Perspectives on the Anglophone WorldGeneral rightsCopyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s)and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise andabide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.Take down policyThe University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorercontent complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright pleasecontact openaccess@ed.ac.uk providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately andinvestigate your claim.Download date: 10. Jun. 2023 AnglesNew Perspectives on the Anglophone World 16 | 2023Cities in Scotland: Cultural Heritage and NationalIdentityInterview – A Literature House for EdinburghJames Loxley and Tara ThomsonElectronic versionURL: https://journals.openedition.org/angles/6921ISSN: 2274-2042PublisherSociété des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur Electronic referenceJames Loxley and Tara Thomson, “Interview – A Literature House for Edinburgh”, Angles [Online], 16 | 2023, Online since 01 June 2023, connection on 02 June 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/angles/6921 This text was automatically generated on 2 June 2023.Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International - CC BY 4.0https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Interview – A Literature House forEdinburghJames Loxley and Tara Thomson Introduction1 In 2004, Edinburgh became the first city to receive the UNESCO designation “World Cityof Literature”. Since then, the Cities of Literature programme has developed as one keystrand in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network, which encompasses 295 cities across 72countries  and  covers  seven  cultural  areas.  There  are  now  42  Cities  of  Literaturethroughout  the  world,  ranging  alphabetically  from  Angoulême  to  Wrocław  andgeographically  spread  across  all  the  continents  (with  the  unfortunate  exception  ofAntarctica).2 Each City of Literature has its own unique dynamics, relating its literary heritage andongoing  life  to  its  broader  history,  its  socio-economic  circumstances,  and  its  placewithin local and national determinants of identity, and Edinburgh is no exception. Asthe capital of the ancient nation of Scotland the city has long been noted for its writers,and this literary identity has become part of the way in which the city presents itself tothe world. It has three major public libraries, two of which – the National Library ofScotland and Edinburgh Central Library – face each other across a road at the heart ofthe  Old  Town  (the  third  is  the  Edinburgh  University  Library,  which  has  been  incontinuous  existence  since  the  late  1500s).  It  holds  an  annual  International  BookFestival,  one of the main such events in the global calendar. It  possesses a Writers’Museum, housed in a reconstructed seventeenth-century house gifted to the city in1907, which celebrates three of the best-known Edinburgh and Scottish writers, WalterScott,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  and Robert  Burns.  Outside  the  museum sits  Makar’sCourt, a square inset with paving stones marked with the names and words of a wholeseries of Scotland’s writers over the centuries.3 As it approaches the twentieth anniversary as a City of Literature, the Trust responsiblefor looking after the designation has been reassessing its work and its plans. It feelsInterview – A Literature House for EdinburghAngles, 16 | 20231that the time is right to try and establish a different kind of literary institution in thecity – one which tells a broader story than is available in the Writers’ Museum, thatfocuses on books as much as on writers, and that will provide a home for literary eventsand activities throughout the eleven months of the year when the Book Festival is notrunning.  The plans to develop that  institution have been in development for  threeyears, and are now edging closer to fruition. Could you tell us about the original intention – towards authors and the city – for creating aLiterature House?The original plan for the Literature House arose from both a sense of what the city ofEdinburgh might need in terms of literary infrastructure, and from the awareness ofpossibilities  derived  from  involvement  in  the  Creative  Cities  network.  LiteratureHouses are familiar institutions in some cities across Europe and North America, inparticular, but they are not part of the way in which people in the UK have engagedeither  with literary heritage or  the literary present.  The latter  is  most  obviouslyevident in book festivals,  book prizes,  and promotional  events run by bookshops,though we should not overlook the growth of book clubs over the last two decades asa hugely significant grassroots readerly activity. But these most prominent forms ofliterary engagement are occasional, rather than institutional, with all the limitationsof  that,  and  often  driven  by  the  demands  of  publishers  for  the  marketing  andpromotion  of  individual  books.  This  can  create  some  extremely  engaging  anddynamic events,  which are obviously highly valued by participants,  but it  doesn’tnecessarily sustain a broader culture in any particularly focused way. Meanwhile,literary heritage is largely focused on museums created, for the most part, within thehouses of former writers, and dedicated to the explication and presentation of theirlives as much as, if  not more than, their books. Sometimes, as at Scott’s house atAbbotsford,  and Burns’  Cottage  in  Alloway,  the  original  domestic  space  has  beencomplemented by a permanent exhibition, but again primarily focused on the lifeand times of the writer. The proposal for a Literature House would bring some ofthese aspects together in a single institution with a permanent exhibition and anintegrated  programme  of  activities,  offered  year-round  to  local  and  visitingaudiences. It would also create a community space for this part of Edinburgh’s OldTown, and a jumping off  point for literature-focused walking tours or self-guidedtravel throughout the city. It would also provide an information gateway to otherliterary activities and heritage sites throughout Scotland. What has been your role in the project?Our  involvement  with  this  project  has  been  primarily  in  thinking  through  thepossibilities for a permanent exhibition dedicated to telling the story of Edinburgh asa city of literature. We came on board because of our experience in creating an onlineliterary map of Edinburgh composed of 50,000 excerpts from books set in the citygeolocated to the places they mentioned. This project gave us invaluable insight intohow the ‘literariness’ of a city might be understood speculatively, and how it is in factunderstood empirically, by both writers and readers. What we also learned from thisproject  was  how  to  reconcile  the  provision  of  informational  abundance  –  whichdigital  capabilities  make  so  easy  –  with  the  user’s  need  for  navigability  andintelligibility,  without sacrificing the one for the other.  This  experience has beencrucial in developing principles and proposals for the interpretation of Edinburgh’sliterary story within the Literature House.Interview – A Literature House for EdinburghAngles, 16 | 20232 What does the Literature House tell us of the City of Literature and the Literary Nation?The primary aim of the Literature House is to tell the story of literary Edinburgh, andby extension, some of Scotland’s literary story. One might imagine the literary city asa synecdoche of the literary nation, although the city inevitably cannot speak fullyfor  the  nation.  Scottish  literature  has  more  often  been  associated  with  thecountryside  and  small  towns  than  its  capital  city,  especially  since  the  twentiethcentury  when  writers  of  the  Scottish  Literary  Renaissance  –  including  HughMacDiarmid, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Willa Muir, and others – worked to construct anarrative of cultural identity rooted in rural and small-town settings, away from thecapital. And yet, even in MacDiarmid’s poetry, Edinburgh looms large as “a mad god’sdream”,  emblematic  of  the “Caledonian antisyzgy”,  or  union of  opposites,  that  isunderstood as a key feature of Scottish literature. The Literature House exhibitionsand events will convey a story of Edinburgh literature that considers carefully thecity’s role as cultural capital of an ancient nation and conveys the polyvocality of itsurban literary landscape. We can think of the city as a palimpsest – a page uponwhich text is inscribed and re-inscribed – a multi-layered record of narrative thatform the heart of the city’s identity. The Literature House will showcase the variousways  that  storytellers  have  imagined  Edinburgh  over  time,  and  how  storiesthemselves have helped shape the imaginative life of the city.  The literary city isdiverse and dynamic,  in constant flux,  as is  Scottish literature more broadly.  TheLiterature  House  will  capture  this  openness  by  setting  forgotten  narratives  andauthors alongside those more well known, and providing a home and hub for thework of contemporary authors contributing to Edinburgh’s and Scotland’s developingcultural identity.  How does the Literature House address questions of inclusion and exclusion?Edinburgh  is  a  divided  city,  a  city  of  opposites.  These  are  written  into  itsarchitectural fabric, and its cultural history: Old Town versus New Town, High Streetversus  Cowgate,  the  Jekyll  of  prim  respectability  and  the  Hyde  of  dark,  unrulypassions. Its writers have often played on this duality in their work, but for a projectlike ours it presents a challenge, since social divisions are written into the way inwhich  the  city  works.  There  is  plenty  of  comfortable  wealth  in  Edinburgh,  thelawyers  and  financiers,  and  there  are  the  ‘left  behind’  communities  of  Leith,  orMuirhouse, or Wester Hailes. In addition, Edinburgh is home to migrant and refugeecommunities from different parts of the world, including most recently exiles fromHong Kong and Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country. Literature means verydifferent things to Edinburgh’s diverse populace, particularly since we are a city withthree native languages, English, Scots, and Gaelic. The difference between Scots andEnglish, especially, is also inflected by class, meaning that these languages don’t haveparity of esteem or status. Our attempts to tell ‘the story’ of Edinburgh as a city ofliterature  risk  reproducing  the  narrow  narratives  of  old  which  privilege  andperpetuate the same perspectives and hierarchies. One of the key opportunities forus in this context, though, is that we are not a museum, nor an archive – we have nocollection of items that come with cultural baggage and around which we are obligedto orientate our self-presentation. We start with a blank slate; we will be looking toensure that we can create multum in parvo, polyvocal stories that our audiences cannavigate  in  ways  that  suit  their  needs  and  interests.  The  affordances  of  digitalinteraction and engagement will be crucial here, creating frameworks and structuresInterview – A Literature House for EdinburghAngles, 16 | 20233for an informational multiplicity within navigable bounds. We will also be focused inour events and exhibition programming on our wish to speak to, and hear from, themultiple  communities  of  Edinburgh.  We  are  formulating  ways  of  structuringengagement with Edinburgh’s literary stories that will take those stories beyond ourwalls,  but  with  the  hope  also  of  bringing  the  varying  stories  told  by  the  city’scommunities back into the frames we are creating. In your sense, how does the Literature House allow us to think of the future of (literary)heritage?As the Literature House is not accountable to a fixed collection of artifacts, it has anopportunity to explore the city’s literary story in a different way from other heritageinstitutions. The term heritage implies a backward view, preservation of an alreadywritten history.  In  contrast,  the  Literature  House  will  engage  both residents  andvisitors  in  a  dynamic  programme  of  exhibitions  and  events  that  representsEdinburgh’s  literary  culture  as  a  diverse  and  ever-changing  body  of  narratives.Digital  interfaces  and  interactions  afford  the  capability  of  shifting  the  LiteratureHouse’s  offerings as the literary culture develops.  It  will  also provide a home forcontemporary authors, facilitating that development. But perhaps most significantly,as a hub for literary activities and programming that extend out to and back in fromcommunities outside the city centre, the Literature House aims to practice “heritagefrom below”, rather than presenting an institutional version of literary history. Inthis sense, it will be a work of cultural making or remaking, rather than reflecting astatus quo of canonical Scottish literature.APPENDIXESFurther informationEdinburgh City of Literature: https://cityofliterature.comEdinburgh International Book Festival: https://www.edbookfest.co.uk Litlog: Edinburgh. Palimpsest Project, https://litlong.org/welcome UNESCO Creative Cities Network: https://en.unesco.org/creative-cities The Writer’s Museum: https://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/venue/writers-museumABSTRACTSThis  interview  explores  the  rationale  and  plans  for  the  creation  of  a  Literature  House  inEdinburgh, which was the first location to be designated a UNESCO World City of Literature andis seeking to find the best ways to curate and promote its literary past and present in order tofoster its future.Interview – A Literature House for EdinburghAngles, 16 | 20234Cet entretien explore le fondement et le processus de création d’une maison de la littérature àÉdimbourg, laquelle a été la première ville désignée comme ville mondiale de la littérature parl’UNESCO. Édimbourg cherche les meilleurs moyens de conserver et de promouvoir son passé etson présent littéraires afin de garantir son avenir.INDEXMots-clés: Édimbourg, Écosse, littérature, patrimoine littéraire, communauté, littératurenationale, littérature numériqueKeywords: Edinburgh, Scotland, literature, literary heritage, community, national literature,digital literatureAUTHORSJAMES LOXLEY Professor of Early Modern Literature, Trustee of the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust.He is the author of numerous books and articles on early modern literature and the PrincipalInvestigator of the LitLong project (2014-17), which created a digital literary map of Edinburgh.Contact: James.Loxley[at]ed.ac.uk TARA THOMSON Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Edinburgh Napier University. She has recently published ThePalgrave Handbook of the Digital and Public Humanities, co-edited with Anne Schwan, and iscurrently completing a monograph on Modernism, Feminism and Everyday Life. Between 2014and 2017 she worked as Research Fellow and Co-Investigator on the LitLong project. Contact:t.thomson2[at]napier.ac.ukInterview – A Literature House for EdinburghAngles, 16 | 20235

Interview - A literature house for Edinburgh

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Interview - A literature house for Edinburgh

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