THE LANGUAGE TEACHER: 36.5 September / October 2012 The Language Teacher  READERS’ FORUM | 31 Simon Bibby interviews literature specialist Paul Hullah Simon Bibby: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, how you came to work in Japan? Paul Hullah: Working-class chancer from northern England whose intelligent parents con- structively reacted to their own lack of learning by ensuring that their son grew up surrounded by books. Taught at Ripon Grammar School by passionate teachers who steered me towards literature comme fait accompli, their shepherd- ing skills replicated by fervent Edinburgh University tutors who directed me through a deconstructionist-feminist PhD (‘The Poetry of Christina Rossetti’) via an English Literature and Language MA. I taught Shakespeare tutorials at Edinburgh University, freelanced as a music journalist, then accepted a ‘Visiting’ Professorship at Okayama National University in 1992: a ‘literature teach- ing’ gig which initially was just that but rapidly became a decade-long microcosm of the way literature’s place in a curriculum can go from centre-stage hero to shunned bit-part player. The goalposts were shifted via dictums emanating from powerful men who’d never stepped inside a classroom but nevertheless thought they knew how English should best be taught. I pulled up tent pegs and moved through a series of short-term Japanese university EFL posts where literature was tolerated, but not encouraged. I adapted. I cheated. I found ways to pretend literary texts were ‘useful’ CLT-wise. I got involved in JALT, became (maybe still am) the ‘crazy British bloke that shouts about literature kp GHNÔ0 KÔf dgeqog swcnkÞgf kp VGHN. rwdnkujgf internationally by then. I survived. By 2008 I’d fgxqvgf uwぷekgpv gpgtikgu vq VGHN vq tgcnk¦g my true love lay in literature: ‘to arrive where yg uvctvgf cpf mpqy vjg rnceg hqt vjg Þtuv vkogÔ. as Eliot wrote. Other circumstances, prominent among them being that trying to get tenure at a national university was like extracting blood from stones, necessitated a life/career change. I applied for and was appointed to my current tenured position, Associate Professor of British Poetry at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo. SB: Tell us about your teaching situation: how does literature feature in your classes? PH: I’m fortunate to be employed in the Literature Faculty of a university that respects intellectual endeavor and teaching that instills active modes of critical thinking in students as well as improving English skills. I’m free to teach nkvgtcvwtg kp cnn o{ encuugu. urgekÞecnn{ Dtkvkuj poetry, for that’s my job. In all my previous posi- tions in Japan, though, I found myself having to apologise for bringing ‘literary’ writings into the classroom, ended up smuggling poetry in ‘Trojan jqtugÔ uv{ng. dgkpi gxcukxg kp uvcぶ oggvkpiu and pretending these wonderfully provocative writings were primarily included to stimulate ‘communicative’ competence. In reality, I was asking students to think, actively engage, develop life skills, grow. Those were the ‘tasks’ I based my teaching on, not booking hotel rooms or buying a packet of fags. SB: You run the annual literature conference Liberlit. Can you tell us about Liberlit? PH: My colleague Mike Pronko and I held the inaugural Liberlit conference in 2010, driven by a sense of despair at the way literary materials are increasingly overlooked, even spurned as a resource for English teachers in Japan. Literary texts are vanishing from textbooks and curricula;