Birmingham is a writers’ city. Long-established novelists David Lodge and Jim Crace have spent most of their writing lives here, using it as direct or indirect inspiration. “It’s a city where the future is being probed and practised rather than one of those scrubbed, historic tourist cities where the past is cosseted and replayed,” says Crace.
In the place once known as “the city of a thousand trades”, the creative industries are becoming increasingly important. The Writers Without Borders collective has found Birmingham to be a particularly supportive city for new voices. Better-known voices have also settled here, including writer-broadcaster Stuart Maconie, poet Liz Berry and playwright David Edgar.
Handsworth-born poet Benjamin Zephaniah calls Birmingham “the best city in
the world”, while novelist Jonathan Coe, despite no longer living there, still writes with Birmingham in his ears. Archers’ screenwriter Mary Cutler always has, despite writing for what used to be known as “an everyday story of country-folk”. Discussing her home town, she once mused on The Archers blog: “I’m a Brummie, and Birmingham is a city that constantly re-invents itself, so I have lived all my life with the phenomenon that is the ever-changing Birmingham skyline.”
Many independent publishers have found a home and flourished here. For many years Tindal Street Press unearthed talented writers from the city, including Gaynor Arnold and Clare Morrall. Birmingham is, after all, at the heart of the country, and is in many ways representative of the real England.
It’s a city that actively welcomes writers. New arrivals tend to comment on how easy it is to begin to be part of the city’s writing life. And there’s no better place to connect with like-minded people than the annual Birmingham literature festival, an independent venture guaranteed to be unlike any other.
Next month the festival welcomes ex-American Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Laura Bates and a host of local and international writers.
Jonathan Davidson is chief executive of Writing West Midlands
