Review of Tramlines,
Manchester Literature Festival
International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
20th October 2012.
Stephanie Thorpe
519 words
I was not sure what to expect from an event named ‘Tramlines.’ I had looked into the event on the Manchester Literature festival website. I had visions of traipsing around Manchester’s tramlines being told stories as we go. So I arrived armed with my umbrella, in readiness for any typical Manchester weather. The event, in fact, took on a more traditional format; seated inside, an introduction, stories read aloud by the writers and finished with a question and answer session. This did not disappoint however!
Jim Hinks, from Comma Press, who introduced a demo of the Tramlines smartphone application, chaired the event. The application will be available in April 2013. It will consist of short stories involving cities from around the world, which follow transport routes and pin point landmarks in the writing. Users can choose to read or listen to the stories on the application while travelling through the specified city. The application is a very innovative idea and I will definitely be downloading the application when it is launched. However, I dread to think of the consequences of its usage abroad with the current extortionate roaming charges.
Jim Hinks explained the way writers visited each other’s cities and wrote the short stories based on the cities they visited. He called it a ‘writers exchange.’ Michelle Green and Roman Simić’s short stories were focused on in the event. Michelle Green visited Zagreb, Croatia and in return Roman Simić visited Manchester. Michelle read her story aloud first. She gave a very expressive reading. It was very impressive and engaging. After all she started her career as a performance poet. In addition, Roman Simić pointed out that he found Michelle’s story to be of poetic style. Roman then followed with the reading of his story based on the tramlines of Manchester. He read in Croatian, while an English translation was displayed on a screen. Roman explained how he liked to listen and collect from the people of Manchester to create his story. He called it ‘stealing’ from the people. Michelle pointed out later that she was unable to do this in Zagreb, as she was not able to understand Croatian. It was interesting to hear the rhythm of the Croatian language in Roman’s story while reading the English translation.
The Question and Answer session created various intriguing discussions. Michelle pointed out that the stories would not replace city guide books, but give a more personal viewpoint to a city, as guide books have a commercialised agenda. Nevertheless, one of the most interesting topics to arise in these discussions was Roman’s perception of Manchester. He talked about how Manchester is bigger than the tramlines. He said he discovered that some areas are segregated and how he found this very sad. Moss Side, an area not connected by the tramlines, played a significant part in his story. Michelle then pointed out how the tramline stops are placed in areas that have a higher average household income, while Zagreb’s tramlines stop in most parts of the city. Therefore, it is to Roman and Michelle’s credit that other areas of Manchester were not forgotten.