This weekend it’s all stations go preparing for StAnza, the poetry festival in St Andrews which runs from March 4-8th and to which poetry lovers from far and wide will flock. They’re packing their bags right now.
An extraordinary variety and range of performers will feature. These include some I know rather well.
For example, there’s Gerry Cambridge,who will read from his new book The Light Acknowledgers on next Thursday afternoon.
And there’s Nancy Campbell whose HappenStance pamphlet, Navigations, is officially published on the date of her afternoon reading next Saturday (but you can get it right now, if you want a copy before that). She is featuring at a poetry breakfast too, which is live-streamed earlier that same day, so can be watched at home. So even if you can’t make it to StAnza, StAnza can make it to you.
If you entered the WrapperRhyme challenge, you too (or your work, at least) will also be on display all week in J G Innes’s bookshop (upstairs gallery). If you can’t come, I will take photos once Jenny Elliott and I get the whole thing on display. It’s looking marvellous even in its disassembled form.
And if you think poets are not all in the same boat, you may change your mind when you see the boat in the WrapperRhyme exhibition. If you are at the festival, please come to the talk on the Friday afternoon if you can, especially if you have a WrapperRhyme on display. This event will be participative!
There will be a HappenStance flashmob again too. Not Edward Lear this year, but Hilaire Belloc’s Matilda, and although all flashmobs are absolutely secret, I can reveal that early on Saturday evening in the Byre café something might happen.
Poets are often a bit intense. But they’re also allowed to have fun.
