From Mansfield to Santiniketan: Poet’s Tagore honour fuels push for literature festival

A Mansfield poet has found himself at the centre of an extraordinary international literary celebration, with his work appearing alongside some of the world's leading Tagore scholars, academics and creative voices.

Richard C. Bower is the fifth contributor in the Personal Essays section of the newly published special edition of Gitanjali and Beyond, the international journal of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies, marking the 165th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore.

His essay, Byron Meets Tagore: A Literary Confluence in Introspective Soliloquies, explores the unlikely creative meeting point between two literary giants - the renowned Nottinghamshire literary figure Lord Byron and Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, philosopher, artist and educator whose legacy continues to resonate across the world.

For Bower, the significance is deeply personal.

"I feel enormously honoured and privileged to have been included in this journal. When you look at the people contributing and the calibre of the editorial and advisory boards, you realise just how significant the platform is.

"To have a Mansfield writer represented in an international Tagore publication on his 165th birth anniversary is something I don't take lightly."

The journal is edited by Professor Bashabi Fraser CBE, Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University and Director of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies.

Dr Saptarshi Mallick, an Assistant Professor at the University of Graz, is an Associate Editor. The journal brings together contributors from across the literary, academic and artistic worlds.

The publication's editorial board and advisory network includes professors and scholars from institutions including Oxford, Chicago, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Durham and Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, alongside internationally recognised writers, poets and artists.

Bower's inclusion is particularly striking because his essay is built around a cultural bridge between two places that might initially appear worlds apart: Mansfield and Santiniketan.

"Mansfield and Santiniketan are very different places," he writes in the essay, "but both have shaped me profoundly."

He describes his poetry as emerging from the collision between Mansfield's industrial and working-class heritage and Tagore's internationalist philosophy, writing of a collection that moves "between Mansfield and Santiniketan, grime and lotus, howl and hymn."

That geographical and cultural connection is at the heart of what Bower now believes Mansfield can offer the wider literary world.

Santiniketan was founded by Tagore and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised for its extraordinary cultural, educational and artistic significance and for Tagore's vision of internationalism and the unity of humanity.

Mansfield, meanwhile, sits within Nottinghamshire's wider literary landscape, with Nottingham recognised internationally as a UNESCO City of Literature. The county itself has an extraordinary literary heritage, from Byron to contemporary writers working across the region.

For Bower, that makes the town part of a much larger literary story.

His appearance in Gitanjali and Beyond comes at a time when he is increasingly looking beyond the publication of his own books and towards what literature can do for the place from which he comes.

That ambition has already been visible through his involvement in Mansfield's Writing on the Wall poetry project.

Bower was appointed judge of the competition, which formed part of the extension of Mansfield's Townscape Heritage Project.

Local writers were invited to respond to themes inspired by the Memorial Garden, with winning poems set to become part of an artwork on the rear wall of Mansfield's historic Old Town Hall.

The project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, has brought poetry directly into Mansfield's public realm, linking literature with the town's heritage and regeneration.

For Bower, it represents something larger than a single competition.

"Writing on the Wall demonstrated what can happen when literature is placed at the heart of a community. It gave people an opportunity to write, to participate and to see their words become part of the physical fabric of Mansfield."

Now he wants to build on that momentum.

Richard is campaigning for Mansfield to establish its own literature festival, something he believes would provide a natural next step for a town with a remarkable literary identity but which, in his view, has yet to fully realise its potential as a destination for literature.

He said: "Mansfield has the history, the writers, the stories and the connections.

"We have Byron, we have our relationship with Nottinghamshire's literary identity, we have writers working here today, we have communities who want to participate, and increasingly, we have international connections."

His latest international recognition, he believes, strengthens that argument.

The Tagore journal places his work within a conversation that crosses Britain, India and the wider world.

His essay itself describes the connection between Nottinghamshire and Santiniketan as more than a biographical coincidence, arguing that both places represent significant literary and cultural traditions.

He continued: "The point isn't simply that I've had an essay published internationally.

"The point is what that connection represents.

"A writer from Mansfield can enter an international conversation about one of the world's great literary figures and bring Mansfield with him."

That is also reflected in the journey of his poetry collection Introspective Soliloquies, which was published by Birutjatio in Santiniketan in November 2025.

The collection brings together the contrasting influences of Byron and Tagore, while Richard's essay describes his work as seeking a literary synthesis between Mansfield's industrial inheritance and Santiniketan's philosophical internationalism.

The book's own publication history has already created a cultural dialogue between Nottinghamshire and India, with its launch taking place alongside Nottinghamshire literary celebrations.

And Richard sees the latest honour as another step in that journey.

For him, the ultimate ambition is not personal recognition.

He said: "It would be wonderful if something that has happened to me as an individual could become something positive for Mansfield.

"I want to use these connections to open doors and bring writers here, bring audiences here and create opportunities for local people."

A Mansfield literature festival, he believes, could provide precisely that platform.

It could celebrate the town's literary history while creating a contemporary programme of poetry, fiction, performance, schools activity, music, discussion and international cultural exchange.

And the timing, he argues, is right.

Across the world, Tagore's legacy continues to demonstrate the power of literature to cross borders.

The Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies itself was established to promote research and creative engagement with Tagore, while the latest issue of Gitanjali and Beyond deliberately invites writers and artists to respond to his legacy through their own creative practice.

Richard has now become one of those voices.

His essay concludes with a belief that literature remains important because it reminds us ‘not only of who we are, but of what we might yet become’.

For Mansfield, he hopes that ‘what we might yet become’ includes a town recognised not simply for its industrial past, but for the literary future it can create.

From Byron to Bower, from Mansfield to Santiniketan, from the walls of the Old Town Hall to an international journal celebrating one of the world's greatest literary figures.

The next step, he believes, is to bring that international conversation home.

And his message to Mansfield is simple – the town should think bigger.

He said: "We shouldn't be asking whether Mansfield is capable of hosting a literature festival, we should be asking what kind of literature festival Mansfield could create."

With meetings already planned to advance the idea, Richard is determined to keep pushing.

The ambition is no longer simply to put Mansfield on the literary map.

It is to help Mansfield draw its own map – one that stretches from the town's Nottinghamshire literary heritage to Nottingham's UNESCO City of Literature designation, from Scotland to Santiniketan and from the town's heritage into its literary future.