 |
| Meeting John Kenyon, Director of Iowa City of Literature. |
Greetings from Keokuk, Iowa, and my seat on the Burlington
Trailways bus to St Louis. Whilst you may be reading these blogs fairly close
together due to me posting them with little time apart, it feels like a
lifetime ago that I was leaving Chicago to travel 4 hours west to Iowa City.
Iowa City was one of the first UNESCO Cities of Literature
and has a good 10 years’ experience under its belt on how to develop and
sustain a program of activity, boost awareness and make the having of a CoL
office sustainable after the UNESCO start-up funds. This obvious link between
Nottingham and Iowa City as sister Cities of Lit and being part of the UNESCO
Creative Cities Network had been my initial draw to the place but soon found
there’s much more to see and find here with their bustling university seemingly
the hub of much of this great activity. With only 2 full days in Iowa City,
with one of these being a Saturday, I had to pile much of what I planned to do
with organisations into just the one day and, when meeting with both the City
of Lit and the IYWP they put me on to other people, who I hope to contact via
email and Skype soon.
I arrived late-ish on Wednesday and went directly to where I
was staying in Coralville, the neighbouring town to Iowa City, but the two have
expanded so much that they now feel like one conurbation. And I went to bed,
because I was tired out! I would need to be on top form the next day!
My first meeting in Iowa City was with Mallory Hellman from
the Iowa Youth Writing Project and her team.
Mall is a friend of Brandon’s, who I met at 826DC. The IYWP deliver in-school
workshops and big-out-of-school engagement sessions, like their young writers’
conference which could have over 200 students attending this year! They’re
strongly tied to the university and we meeting in Mall’s office on campus. We
talk about the model they use, success stories and the commonalities and
differences, as we see them, in the US and UK systems – although we veer into
talking about healthcare for ages and I do my love-letter/eulogy for the NHS.
Later, I have a long conversation about evidencing and impact reporting – the
glamorous life I lead! IYWP are going to be in a school later and invite me
along so I can see what they do first-hand after my next meeting.
 |
| Me and Mallory at the IYWP. |
Next up, is meeting John Kenyon – the director of Iowa City of Literature, at the
public library where their office is based. I have a small window of time
before meeting John so have a quick wander around town and try to take in some
of the brass plaques honouring writers inlaid into the pavements, which form
part of the city’s Lit
Walks, and have a look at library and its children’s section.
I meet John and the Rachels (both of the other two staff
members are, not surprisingly, called Rachel) and we talk about what Nottingham
is doing as a CoL, Iowa’s specific interests and programming, bookstores and
baseball – John is a Dodgers fan and finds it pretty funny that I support the
Padres, even having my Padres hoodie on under my jacket.
I’m particularly impressed with the work Iowa CoL does with
sophomore high-school students with their annual essay writing contest, the Paul Engle High
School Essay Contest, where the winning prize of which is a year’s free
tuition to the university (!!!), and the One
Book, Two Book children’s literature festival which places work created by
children, working with organisations like IYWP, alongside professional,
national-profile children’s authors. They have a close association also with an
organisation which is the national exam body for one of the tests US children
have to complete – they work together in the marking of writing submissions by
children and award prizes for both technical proficiency and writing from the
heart, something which I really liked as an idea. I also loved the Little Free
Libraries and John gave me a plaque for a new library which I hope to set
up in Nottingham! John gave me a list of things to do in Iowa City around its
literary heritage and contemporary scene and said he’d hook me up with his
friend Jim, who runs a tailgate party before the college football games and
that there was one on Saturday.
My next stop was Mark Twain Elementary school with IYWP
where I joined some of Mal’s students for their regular after-school program. I
two sessions, one for third-graders and another for fourth-graders, we wrote
stories in groups about what Halloween (our prompt was “what would we do if we
discovered our house was haunted”) and in the other, wrote definitions for
nonsense words and I made the group come up with a definition for “mardy”,
which they decided was a type of zebra, or zeeeeeebra, as they would say!
 |
| Iowa City's Little Free Libraries |
On Saturday morning, I visited the front of the Iowa Children’s
Museum, who are one of the partners in the One Book, Two Book program that the
City of Literature runs. They had some cool STEM activities and ball runs which
had attracted a very excited crowd of little Iowans. I got the bus into town
and went to visit some of the town’s Little Lending Libraries, which I’d seen
online before and then spoken to John about the day before. I dropped into the
famous Prairie Lights bookstore next and spotted a photo of DH Lawrence up next
to the cash register – us Cities of Lit have to stick together!
I then took the brisk walk from town to the university
campus, across the Iowa River, to the monstrously large Kinnick Stadium. John
had hooked me up with his friend Jim, who had been the president of the CoL
board, who runs a tailgate party from the back of his Suburban – serving up a
menu of beer, snacks and a good time! Tailgating is a uniquely American
experience and, when stood with a light beer in a koozie in your hand in a
freezing cold parking lot with a man playing a Sousaphone next to you and
everyone singing their “fight song”, then you understand why. Everyone at Jim’s
party was so welcoming and interested in what I was doing, including one who
was a school librarian – so we had a great chat – plus, his friend Kim got me a
ticket for the game!
My over-riding memory for the game was that the stadium,
which seats 70,000, was full and this was for a university game! The last time
I watched a team in gold and black on a synthetic pitch was Basford United, and
here was a crowd the size of Manchester United! It was also freezing! Iowa was
experiencing a bit of a cold snap and it got down to around -2! Iowa beat
Minnesota by 17 – 10 and they got to keep a trophy of a pig called Floyd. As an
outsider, it was a strange experience, especially with the stoppy-starty nature
of Gridiron but I did enjoy the noise of the partisan crowd, particularly when
it was the opposition’s third down!
 |
| Before the game at Kinnick Stadium! Go Hawkeyes! |
After the game I headed back into town to meet Rachel and
her husband to see “the other side of Iowa City”. IC can seem quite genteel and
a sleepy university town that can spill over a little when the football or the
students are on form, but there’s a subversive side too. Rachel wanted to show
me this and we went to the Heartland Bombshells’ queer Halloween-themed
burlesque show at the Blue Moose tavern and grabbed a few beers in some of the
other bars, although sadly Vonnegut’s old haunt of the Dublin Underground was
full of students in fancy dress.