Cities of Literature

TODAY begins an intermittent series of reflections on Dunedin as a Unesco city of literature (COL). What criteria of selection did we meet? What other cities share the title? Why is Dunedin a City of Literature? What is the whole thing for? And who? Today, just the first two questions: the others later.

Criteria

The stated criteria include: publishing; educational programmes concerned with literature, domestic and/or foreign; hosting events which promote literature; libraries, bookstores and cultural centres; a publishing sector which advances translation of foreign literature; involvement of media in promoting literature and its markets. Literature must have a past, present, and energetic future. Hence we have a director for our COL involvement, Nicky Page.

What is literature?

So what is literature anyway?

Literature may be defined broadly as all writing, from the word’s root in letters, and from usage like ‘‘the literature on’’ a subject. (A DLitt is a ‘‘doctor of

letters’’). Literature may be defined more narrowly as imaginative writing — usually with focus on poetry, drama, and fiction. Or something in between, to include (say) biography or history. Unesco puts some emphasis on books and their production. Dunedin has splendid libraries, with rich special collections, a Centre for the Book, as well as links with writers of many kinds, not least those Burns fellows who have just celebrated 60 years. These activities all need patrons with flair: Dunedin had Charles Brasch.

Other cities

Other cities include: Melbourne and Iowa City (2008); Dublin (2010); Reykjavik (2011); Norwich (2012); Krakow (2013); and Heidelberg (2014). The size varies widely: we aren’t the smallest. Dunedin finds itself in company well worth exploring.

Known for it

These cities are ‘‘known for’’ their connections with literature: Unesco recognises and encourages a reputation already gained. The scheme and the title tell me things I didn’t know, or didn’t recognise about these places.

Norwich

Take Norwich. Julian of

Norwich (13421416) still brings glory to her city, where you may see this anchorite mystic’s ‘‘cell’’. In her Revelations of Divine Love, which she called more simply

Showings, ‘‘he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand . . . In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God preserves it.’’ And ‘‘He said not ‘Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be diseased’; but he said, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome’.’’

Iowa City

More prosaically, Norwich has a vigorous, prestigious school of creative writing. So does Iowa City, which helped to train New Zealand’s second winner of the Booker Prize, Eleanor Catton (for The Luminaries).

‘‘Everyone’s from somewhere else’’ on the Hokitika goldfields. The remark resonates.

Reykjavik

This city of the sagas is not much bigger than Dunedin. It has a very fine modern detective writer, Arnaldur Indridasson. I admit to being hazy about what has happened in between him and the sagas! May this award impel discovery.

Dublin

A differently literary city! So crammed with great writers that sometimes you equate magnificent English with its Dublin Irish: Joyce, Synge,

Wilde, Yeats. O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,/ Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?/ O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,/ How can we know the dancer from the dance? Julian of Norwich would have understood that.