There is a "real danger" in forcing people into being useful in a material sense and disregarding their creative side, President Michael D Higgins has warned.
It was vital that young people were allowed to develop their imaginations and curiosity, he added at the unveiling of a 60 cent postage stamp to mark Dublin's designation as a Unesco city of literature. "When education is going badly that wonderment is stopped and people are asked to adjust themselves to something that may not in fact be the very best," he added.
“People are sometimes it is suggested being asked to fit themselves in to what is available in a material sense in life,” he said.
The stamp chosen has a short description of Dublin by Eoin Moore (19) who took part in a creative writing programme at the Fighting Words centre in Dublin, which runs writing workshops for young people. Eoin described the city in just 224 words, while it had taken James Joyce 265,000 words in Ulysses , said President Higgins, adding it was an "extraordinary achievement".
Thousands of stories, five anthologies, a novel and several films had been produced at the centre, said President Higgins. “It is an impressive record of which you should be very proud,” he told the audience of mainly young people at the Fighting Words centre.
Roddy Doyle and Sean Love, co-founders of the centre, said they hoped to open a centre in Belfast next year. The Dublin centre has run courses for 40,000 students since it was set up in January 2009. Short stories and poems written by young people who have attended the centre appear in a supplement with today's Irish Times .
Dublin was designated a Unesco city of literature in 2010, one of six cities awarded the title, including, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Iowa City, Reykjavik and Norwich. The bright yellow stamp marking the designation was designed by the Stone Twins, two Amsterdam-based Irish designers.
The following text of Eoin Moore’s short story appears on the 60 cent commemorative stamp, celebrating Dublin’s designation as a Unesco city of literature:
The thick clouds cover up the moonlight, but the city’s lights provide worthwhile illumination - above them all, the beacon burns bright atop the monolithic podium, signalling to wayfaring voyages the ancient Viking settlement. Now, where Norsemen once stood, I look back, along the quays, streets and alleys, to where the inhabitants live their lives: eating, speaking, and breathing their city into existence. It gives me cause to wonder, as I stroll aimlessly along the cobbled paths, about those who have traversed them before me, by carriage or before there were even cobbles to walk upon. I feel their lives and mine are somehow connected, that we all were at one point a part of this city, living pieces of its grand, striking framework. Every High King and scholar, every playwright and poet, every politician and every rebel, every merchant, student, and busker who ever set foot in the city holds or held onto a chunk of this city’s soul; every one of them stepped to the city’s heartbeat. I listen to the streets at night and I can feel the city’s lifeblood pumping through me; I can feel myself flowing through it. All of us who travel those arteries step on the words, actions, and lives of those who travelled them before us. They city embodies the people, and the people embody the city.