StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival

The town of St Andrews – where StAnza: Scotland’s Poetry Festival takes place every March – can easily claim to be the poetry capital of Scotland. Here’s why…

As well as hosting the only major Scottish international poetry event, the town has many connections with poets of note – from Edwin Muir last century, going back to Andrew Lang, Robert Fergusson and William Dunbar. On top of this the principal Scottish poet of last century – Hugh MacDiarmid – lived in the town in the early part of last century.

On top of that, the university is home to the UK largest building (other than libraries) dedicated to poetry. This is Poetry House, part of the University of St Andrews School of English. This is home to 5 of the country’s leading contemporary poets – John Burnside, Robert Crawford, Douglas Dunn, Kathleen Jamie & Don Paterson – all of whom work for the School of English and live in the vicinity of the town.

I am happy to share the stage of 2021’s edition with dozens of talents from around the world. This year’s festival themes of ‘Make It New’ and ‘No Rhyme nor Reason’, and a translated language focus of ‘Beyond the Iron Curtain’.

I will conduct the ‘meet the Artist’ live webcast session on the 8th of March at 12:30 (UK Time) as well as premier my PhD research outcome, a short film “On How The Palace Bridge Opens Up Its Hands” at the festival’s filmed poetry section ‘Poetry Loops’: https://stanzapoetry.org/festival/events/poetry-loops-4

Learn more on: https://stanzapoetry.org/

Join StAnza 2021 on 6-14 March, 2021