StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival was founded in Saint Andrews in 1997 by three poets; Brian Johnstone, Anna Crowe and Gavin Bowd, cleverly naming the festival using a combination the location of St Andrews and ‘stanza’ for those of you who may have missed it! The festival is widely regarded as one of the leading poetry events in Europe and we are very much looking forward to it this year.
This year StAnza runs from March 6th – 14th as a fully online digital experience which is great news for audiences all over the world who can access and enjoy the program online with all of the events being streamed live from St Andrews in Scotland!
“StAnza 2021 celebrates the profound relevance of poetry, showcasing a wide range of the artform, from page to performance, concrete verse to spoken word, established artists to emerging voices – committed as ever to the fact that when it comes to poetry there really is something for everyone”
More than 90 poets will take part in around 100 events at StAnza this year and it’s set to be a wonderful celebration of poetry from every perspective and with poets from all over the world it’s sure to be a truly international celebration of poetry and communication. In a time where we have all been feeling distant from each other, the importance of communication, shared experience and poetry is as great as ever.
On Tuesday March 9th poets Chris McCabe, Astra Papachristodoulou and Jinhao Xie will be sharing their how to on Instagram poetry, an innovative way to create and share your poems with the world. “Instagram poetry has been credited with creating a new generation of poetry lovers – but this isn’t just about a new platform for the artform. Instead, with its emphasis on brevity and focus on the visual, Instagram has encouraged writers to explore more unusual forms of concrete and visual poetry.”
Register for this event here (you can also make a donation)
Other highlights include an Inspire Session on Wednesday March 10th with Ayrshire based poet Gerry Cambridge, founder of transatlantic magazine The Dark Horse, which remains Scotland’s leading poetry journal. He is also an essayist, print designer and typographer, with a background in natural history photography. He lived in an Ayrshire caravan for twenty years before leaving to become a Brownsbank Fellow in Hugh MacDiarmid’s former home for 1997–1999. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (2006–2009) and at Glasgow Caledonian University (2010–2012). His latest collection, The Light Acknowledgers, appeared in 2019 with HappenStance Press.
Register for this event here (you can also make a donation).
Full StAnza festival program available at www.stanzapoetry.org
Tickets for all events available from The Byre Theatre: www.byretheatre.com
Follow the festival on Twitter at @StAnzaPoetry