Spotlight on...Jerome de Groot
Dr Jerome de Groot, Senior Lecturer, English and American Studies in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
Please can you tell us a little about your role?
As well as being an academic in the Division of English, American Studies and Creative Writing, I am the Chair of Manchester Literature Festival and currently Chair of the working group for Manchester UNESCO City of Literature. In 2017 I led the bid for Manchester to become a UNESCO City of Literature - we were successful in this application (announced in October). I am currently helping develop this status and putting in place the infrastructure to ensure that the City of Literature delivers on its transformative promise to put writing and reading at the centre of the city’s identity.
What does the UNESCO City of Literature mean for the University, and what’s coming up in the next few months that we can get involved in?
The City of Literature designation is a signal to the world that we are a creative city and that we excel at writing; it is a ‘brand’ for Manchester, a benchmark of its commitment to culture and development. It signals a commitment to the transformation of the city and its citizens through access to creativity and particularly writing and reading. We at The University of Manchester (UoM) are a major partner in the City of Literature which means we are working closely with Manchester City Council, Manchester Libraries Service, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester Literature Festival, the Arts Council and other cultural organisations throughout the city to deliver on the amazing potential found here. We want to create a thriving ‘City of Writing’ - a northern hub of writing, publishing, events, and teaching. This will mean that Manchester is seen as one of the preeminent literary and creative cities in Europe. We’re also looking at a new libraries festival, helping writer development, developing cultural infrastructure, and enhancing Manchester’s reputation as a centre for translation.
Yet the City of Literature is a collaborative project that involves everyone in the city, from library users to poets, from publishers to reading groups, in redefining how we think of writing and reading, and how it is important to us. We are looking to commemorate the amazing work that has been done here by important writers such as Anthony Burgess and Elizabeth Gaskell (and radical writers like Marx or Pankhurst), to sustain the thriving writing scene that currently makes Manchester the UK’s ‘Capital of Poetry’, to help ensure more people use the amazing library services in the city, and to celebrate language diversity throughout Manchester by looking at writing in multiple languages. We are working with organisations from Z-arts, Commonword, Comma Press, Carcanet Press and the link to spaces including the Royal Exchange and Chetham’s Library. We are able to contribute hugely to the way in which Manchester is conceived as a creative city. The creative industries in Manchester are crucially important to the city’s sense of itself and the way other people think of it.
More than this, though, the City of Literature project is also an opportunity for UoM researchers to think about engaging with heritage and cultural institutions in the city through this conduit that we now have. We are excited about people taking this opportunity to work with organisations both city - and region - wide (and also internationally - we have great links with other UNESCO Cities of Literature around the world). A good example of what is happening is the activity around International Mother Language Day on 21 February - we have loads of events around the city celebrating translation, language diversity, and writing in languages such as Urdu, Jamaican patios, Japanese, and Farsi.
You’ve been Chair of the Manchester Literature Festival (MLF) for many years. What highlights stand out for you from past Festivals, and is there anything you’d love to see at the festival in the future?
The UoM is the Manchester Literature Festival’s official Higher Education Partner (since 2017), and this is a great way of sealing what has been a terrific collaboration over ten years. I’m really proud of the work that the MLF has done in expanding audiences for writing of all kinds, and in developing amazing new events and commissions such as the Manchester Sermon (at the Cathedral), partnership with the Karachi Literature Festival, or various really interesting writer-in-residence schemes and projects like Women Who Dare.
The festival is an incredible force for good in terms of culture, writing, performance, and publishing in the city and the region, with a great reputation around the country. They’ve a real commitment to innovation and making sure that writing is not a static, fixed art form but something that is radical and compelling. So for instance in March Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, is coming to discuss her work and activism, and then the month later Brett Anderson is talking about his work with Suede and in songwriting. So it is a really diverse and engaging organisation that has multiple interests, and this really contributes to Manchester’s cutting-edge cultural scene. Wishlist: I’d love to see Ta-Nehisi Coates, Thomas Pynchon, Lydia Davis or Claudia Rankine. Scott Walker has just published a book, too, and he’d be pretty cool.
Which author, alive or dead, would you invite to dinner and what would you talk about?
Well, I work on William Shakespeare and John Milton so I guess maybe them, although I’m sure Milton would be quite a challenging guest… so I guess Shakespeare. Slightly intimidating!