Deane backs transformed Derry for cultural bid

Acclaimed poet, scholar and novelist Seamus Deane has given his endorsement to the Derry-Londonderry bid to become UK City Culture 2013.

During a visit to his home town on Wednesday Deane, whose first novel ‘Reading In The Dark’ was nominated for the Booker Prize and won the Irish Literature prize in 1997, called into the City of Culture Office in the old Northern Counties building to give his backing to the bid.

“I think Derry has a combination of history and geography that makes it a border city between two conditions as well as two countries. I knew Derry before the troubles, during the troubles and much less so since the troubles. When I come back now, the difference between what Derry is now and was then, seems to me the more remarkable, the more noticeable. Just for achieving that kind of transformation itself makes Derry merit the award of city of culture.

“The obvious things are the physical changes but I mean the most lasting change is the atmosphere. The atmosphere is a great deal more relaxed a good deal softer than it used to be. And the conversations I have with people are less spiky than they used to be. That sort of atmospheric change indicates a deeper change that has taken place in the community at large and frankly it’s not one that I thought I would live to see. It has the historical depth and reference and it has the reputation which was won, alas, during the troubles but has also been won during the reconciliation. And as far as the local talent is concerned, I don’t know now. But I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t fairly robust and deep,” he said.

Deane who is currently the Keough Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, and a co-editor of Field Day Review, literary journal says that Derry has a critical mass of cultural and historical depth that other cities simply can’t match,

“They don’t have that critical history, if there are other cities in the UK that are in competition, whatever their virtues maybe, and they may be many, they don’t have this kind of history which is important for the UK and for Ireland both.”
And he believes that was Derry selected to be the UK’s first ever cultural capital it would send out a strong message regarding the linkage between the political and critical processes.

“I think, number one, it would increase the confidence of the people. I think it would give a higher burnishing gloss to Derry’s reputation, even higher than it has now. But I suppose the major benefit would be to show people that there is a link between the cultural and the political, achievement in the political realm and the cultural realm can be connected in such a way that the two should never be regarded as separate because I think it’s damaging for each to be separate. I think to become the city of culture is political act and it would bring about the convergence of two things that have been damagingly separated,” he said.

And Deane believes that a successful campaign would see the city become a magnet for visitors attracted by the prospect of experiencing a place that has undergone a fundamental transformation.

“I would say there would be a lot of people who are originally from here or who knew this place during the troubles who would find a magnetic pull to come back here and see it in a transformed state. As I say the transformation is not just physical but atmospheric and therefore a psychological transformation, and it’s not often that you get an opportunity to see something like that.”

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