Are we doomed

to have one festival

after another?

Tessa Ransford

 

When Edinburgh was awarded the title of City of Literature in 2004 I was president of Scottish PEN and had written in support of the application, hoping also that Scottish PEN might be found an office for the first time in its nearly 80 years of existence. This happened thanks to Edinburgh City Council, who had backed the City of Literature idea.
     I also asked whether Edinburgh could become a City of Refuge for persecuted writers, as such a network was being established through International PEN with a centre in Stavanger. An enthusiastic committee was set up to take this further with representatives from the council, the libraries, the Refugee Council, the Book Festival, the Book Trust, the new City of Literature officers and Scottish PEN. It was decided it should be furthered through the City of Literature trustees, who were favourable.
     At one meeting it was announced that James Boyle was stepping down as chairman of those trustees and that Sandy Crombie was taking over. I remember asking what he had to do with literature, and the City of Literature officer – a former assistant editor with Edinburgh University Press – replied: 'He knows about money'. Soon after this an organisation was set up, with its own officer, to combine the marketing efforts of the various festivals held in Edinburgh throughout the year, entitled 'The Thundering Hooves' project.
     I should have realised that the City of Literature ploy was about money, tourists, investment, rather than about literature. Edinburgh has not become a City of Refuge, despite a special event at the Book Festival in August 2006 with the director from Stavanger, the lord provost (Lesley Hinds) and the executive director of International PEN speaking.
     I was replaced from that committee by my successor as president of Scottish PEN in 2007. To most citizens Edinburgh has not become a 'City of Literature' either. They haven't heard of it.
     As architect Malcolm Fraser explained last Monday evening at the Edinburgh International Book Festival – much to my amazement as he did not know I was in the audience – it was the Scottish Poetry Library which was one of the main strengths in the application to UNESCO for City of Literature status. Andrew Dixon, director of Creative Scotland, was chairing Malcolm's inspirational talk about buildings for literature in Edinburgh. Dixon waxed hysterical about the need to have more and more festivals so that there is no 'gap' whatever throughout the year. Several members of the audience questioned this frantic suggestion, thankfully.

 

     The people who attend the cultural festivals are not the everyday working folk of the city. The actual citizens and workers of Edinburgh, in the hospitals, banks, post offices, universities, churches, offices, streets, shops of all kinds, restaurants, community centres, schools, sports centres and hotels, are mostly unaware of belonging to a 'City of Literature'. When I want to inspire my grandchildren about reading I take them to the reference department at the Central Library full of people reading, stacked with journals on every subject under the sun; that and the Christian Aid book sale, manned by voluntary experts in every subject in a church in George Street every year in May.
     Of course tourists do come to Edinburgh throughout the year. What they most long for is some authentic Scottish culture, such as traditional music at the Royal Oak, some Gaelic and Scots language song and poetry, a genuine ceilidh, a small poetry reading in a café, local art exhibitions. They want to see the city as it normally is, with its austerities and lack of cafés to sit and chat in the evening without the expense of a meal. There are museums and art galleries, theatres, ballet and opera in many European cities.
     Altogether I feel the non-stop and ever-proliferating festival's strategy is flogging dead horses when there are ponies naturally roaming the fields, which could do with a bucket of oats. I myself am reading at Rosslyn chapel, St John's Church, Blackwell's Bookshop and WordPower Bookshop in the next two weeks, so the book festival isn't everything, nor is the official festival, nor is even the fringe. Much goes on throughout the year all over Scotland, far from Glasgow and Edinburgh, in 'undercurrents' – which flow with energy and are not blocked with bureaucracy and the flogging of more and more on a more and more impoverished citizenship.
     I was asked to give a talk to the Edinburgh People's Festival on 10 August in the beautiful Nelson Hall in the Pleasance, hireable at £6 an hour. The festival was revived four years ago after its original heyday with Hamish Henderson in the early 1950s. My topic was Henderson's poetry. I entitled my talk with a quote from Hamish: 'Literature must desire to be life, not an idea of life'. And tried to tease out what he meant by 'Poetry becomes People' adapted from Heine's 'freedom becomes people' – people, not individuals, but also individuals.
     Andrew Dixon apparently spent his first year in post at Creative Scotland meeting and talking to people, probably some of those at the splendid dinner in the museum, so hilariously described by Bill Jamieson (17 August). Dixon did not seek or ask to meet me, though according to Malcolm Fraser, the tiny amount of money spent on the Scottish Poetry Library was probably the money best spent ever for the arts in Edinburgh.

 

Tessa Ransford is a poet and founder of the Scottish Poetry Library