It's our time
People are slow to leave it, quick to return. And there are others who come, as they think, for a year or two, and stay a lifetime, sensing that they have found a city that is in the world, yet sufficiently on the edge of it to have a different resonance.
From Philip Larkin's foreword to A Rumoured City: New Poets from Hull
I came to Hull because there was a job for me. That was it. I had been here just once before my job interview, though like everyone else I had plenty of preconceived notions and prejudices. It's safe to say it was not high on my list of desired job locations.
I came for a contract of 9 months. I don't intend to leave.
I have fallen in love with this overlooked city. It is the punchline to too many jokes. It has the misfortune, as The Observer recently pointed out, to "sit on the world ladder between dull and hell". It sits, too, at the top and bottom of all the wrong league tables. It is isolated and insular, its own citizens too often condemning their city and themselves.
And yet, it is wonderful. It is tenacious, ambitious, determined. It is surprising and enchanting. It is beautiful.
It has not tended to blow its own trumpet. Past tense. Because now Hull is shouting, and it is shouting loud.
In one week we will learn if we are to be UK City of Culture 2017.
The final bid presentation opens with this film. That's the city I have come to love. That's the city I choose to call home.
I am from Loughborough. And I am from Hull. And it's our time.
From Philip Larkin's foreword to A Rumoured City: New Poets from Hull
I came to Hull because there was a job for me. That was it. I had been here just once before my job interview, though like everyone else I had plenty of preconceived notions and prejudices. It's safe to say it was not high on my list of desired job locations.
I came for a contract of 9 months. I don't intend to leave.
I have fallen in love with this overlooked city. It is the punchline to too many jokes. It has the misfortune, as The Observer recently pointed out, to "sit on the world ladder between dull and hell". It sits, too, at the top and bottom of all the wrong league tables. It is isolated and insular, its own citizens too often condemning their city and themselves.
And yet, it is wonderful. It is tenacious, ambitious, determined. It is surprising and enchanting. It is beautiful.
It has not tended to blow its own trumpet. Past tense. Because now Hull is shouting, and it is shouting loud.
In one week we will learn if we are to be UK City of Culture 2017.
The final bid presentation opens with this film. That's the city I have come to love. That's the city I choose to call home.
I am from Loughborough. And I am from Hull. And it's our time.