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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Travel
Michael MacLeod

Edinburgh City of Literature launches Let's Get Lyrical

Let's Get Lyrical's organisers made snowman versions of John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Elton John in the Meadows
Let's Get Lyrical's organisers made snowman versions of John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Elton John in the Meadows

Thousands of song lyric cards and bookmarks are appearing in local libraries schools and cafes.

Locals in Edinburgh are asked to use them to share the lyrics they love in Edinburgh's newly announced annual reading campaign, Let's Get Lyrical.

You can also talk about the lyrics that mean the most to you online.

The results will be revealed online in February as part of the fifth reading campaign run by Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature, in partnership with Glasgow UNESCO City of Music.

Organisers said they always wanted to include music in their annual campaigns, and Glasgow's designation as a City of Music was the perfect excuse.

Musicians and writers have joined in already, penning stories about their favourite lyrics. We're told Ian Rankin has gone for The Falls by New Zealand band The Mutton Birds. It shares a title with one of his own novels.

It follows on from this year's Carry a Poem campaign and again organisers have put together a programme of events. Ali Bowden, director, the City of Literature Trust said:

"Over the last five years we've run lots of projects in all sorts of areas but we'd always secretly wanted to do something on song lyrics because they have huge power, and in our City of Literature we're passionate about the power of words.

"When Glasgow was designated a UNESCO City of Music, then we knew we had our excuse and our chance to get lyrical.

"We're hoping folk will hop onto the website and share their story of how the words in a particular song move them the way they do."

Organisers will be tweeting some highlights of the submissions up until the month-long campaign in February.

In 2007 thousands of free copies of Robert Louis Stevenson' s Kidnapped were distributed across Edinburgh in the One Book-One Edinburgh citywide reading campaign. It was presented in four editions of a graphic novel by Alan Grant, illustrated by Cam Kennedy.

In 2008 another Stevenson classic, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was selected.

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