Annie’s StAnza

When your events are so popular that you have to find extra space to accommodate more of the audience, you know you are getting something right. StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival is now in its thirteenth year and festival, held at the Byre Theatre and venues in St Andrews from 17-21 March, was a sell-out; most notably the events with Seamus Heaney and Linton Kwesi Johnson, which, to give more people a chance to enjoy them, were relayed on a screen in the Studio Theatre upstairs from the Byre Theatre’s main auditorium.

The atmosphere throughout the weekend was one of exuberant celebration, starting with the St Patrick’s Day launch on Wednesday night with poetry from Matthew Sweeney and Moya Cannon and music from the graceful Galway trio Dordán. All this was just a prelude to the Irish focus of the first two days of the festival, with poets Anne-Marie Fyfe, Colette Bryce, Dennis O’ Driscoll, whose droll wit and satirical edge makes him surely the Dave Allen of Irish poetry – and of course Seamus Heaney. Returning to the festival for the first time since 1999, this poetic legend delighted audiences, festival staff and just about everyone he met with his warmth, humour, eloquence and the power of his poetry. In terms of the latter, he is gives us a sense, perhaps, of the poetic gift of imbas forosnai, which Grevel Lindop referred to in Friday’s StAnza Lecture, Myth, Magic and the Future of Poetry, itself a response to StAnza’s theme, Myth & Legend. More legendary poetry was to come in the shape of the great Linton Kwesi Johnson, who appeared alongside the amazingly talented John Akpata, who admitted that headlining with the ‘father of dub poetry’ was ‘the biggest night of his life’.

A festival is more than the sum of its line-up. At StAnza there is a special alchemy that is created by myriad encounters and opportunities to be creative. Stroll through the Byre Theatre on Saturday and you found a buzz and energy that is unsurpassed elsewhere: people moving between events, or chatting over coffee or drinks. A festival is as much about the exchange of ideas, the inspiration – and the unexpected. This year StAnza acquired its own unofficial one man Fringe: Andrew Newman, a therapist from Edinburgh decided to support the cause of poetry and the Haiti Earthquake disaster appeal by becoming a ‘poem-catcher’. He asked passers-by in St Andrews to donate a short poem and on the first day, collected 58. By the following afternoon, he had 38 more. Some of the visiting poets were spotted writing poems for Andrew. The youngest person to donate one was a five-year-old boy. At last reckoning the number was in the hundreds. The plan, he hopes, is to compile them in book form and sell copies, the proceeds going to the Haiti appeal.

It’s a cliché to say ‘you had to be there’ in order to experience the magical atmosphere of poetry and partying that is StAnza. But you can catch some of the highlights by listening to our podcasts, visiting our Flickr pool and our website for photos and more news of (to misquote Heaney) the marvellous festival as we had known it.

Annie Kelly is the Press & Media Manager for StAnza

StAnza: the afternoon after the night before

I am sitting in the foyer of the Byre Theatre in St Andrews. The bistro is closed and the place is deserted. What a difference a day makes! Yesterday, at the same time, there were clouds of people drifting around, chattering about events, reading the papers, drinking coffee, waiting for Linda Marlowe’s excellent one woman show of Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife, buying the last few tickets for Don Paterson and Vicki Feaver’s sold out 8pm performance. Trio Verso were sound checking, chef was roasting a fine side of beef for the poets’ dinner and the bar staff were stocking up for the finale party. We toasted outgoing director Brian Johnstone and callooed Eleanor Livingstone, who’s carrying on the baton, and stamped our feet to the music of Dry Island Buffalo Jump, St Andrew’s premier band comprised of academics.

We’ll be putting some pictures up over the next few days and reflecting more upon some of the events we saw and the wonderful people we met – best laid schemes ganged aft agley in the tempting swirl of poetry and hordes of exciting conversations. In the meanwhile, do check out the photo blog, a StAnza first, created by the indefatigable Vero, and the StAnza flickr stream, which will continue to grow over the days to follow. The StAnza podcasts are all live and ready to fill your ears with the stuff you may have missed too.

StAnza 18/3/10: Seamus, myth and magic

We’re enjoying some glorious weather here in St Andrews, despite a brave wind, upending wheelie bins and scattering pigeons. Apparently it’s gusting in from Ireland, or so we’ve heard it said. It was doubly apt then, that winds of different kinds blew through Seamus Heaney’s sold out performance last night. There were winds fit for kites – the one in the old favourite ‘A Kite for Michael and Christopher’, a new one for his new granddaughter ‘wee Aibhín’. There was the ill wind that brought a stroke a few years ago, and the winds of change as he sampled new material from forthcoming collection Human Chain (out in September from Faber, ‘all being well’).

He opened the first act with readings from new work. He declared he was wracked with nerves. You wouldn’t have known. As well as tackling the difficult period after the stroke (in which he re-imagines his descent down the stairs to the waiting ambulance, passed from hand to hand, as the Biblical figure passed through a roof hole to the feet of Jesus; the silent journey in a speeding ambulance with his wife is evoked through Donne’s ‘The Extasie’ – their souls commingling above, their bodies mute). ‘Album’ contained five snapshots of his family life: his father, his own sons, his parents on their honeymoon (which he, unbidden, also attended). This was intensely powerful, moving stuff, performed with charm and humility, wearing its intellect lightly. There was Latin and the Bible, Dante and MacCaig, history, myth and strangeness all embroidered into one set in which each poem spoke to the next. And that was the first half.

In the second half, he read old favourites. He didn’t read ‘Digging’ (‘Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.’), though someone, he said, had inquired, feeling that particular one has had its fair share of renderings. He opted instead for three from the Clearances sequence, for his mother, on folding sheets, on the shift that occurred with her last breath. There was ‘The Strand at Loch Beg’, for his second cousin Colum McCartney, innocent victim of the Northern Irish Troubles. Each poem came with a tale, illumination, a way of looking at the things we’ve read before with a fresh eye.

Elsewhere in a very exciting StAnza Thursday, Luis Munoz and John Burnside read, followed by Anne-Marie Fyfe at the Parliament Hall 5 O’Clock Verses; Grevel Lindop delivered the StAnza lecture, entitled ‘Myth, Magic and the Future of Poetry‘. He’s been kind enough to pop it on his website so you can read it too. Angela McSeveney read over pies and pints at lunchtime and Italian poet Valerio Magrelli read alongside Glasgow’s own Hamish Whyte. I name but a few. Speaking of 5 O’Clock Verses, the next edition calls. Kei Miller and Tiffany Atkinson up next. Seamus Heaney is in conversation of Dennis O’Driscoll about Stepping Stones, Dennis’s biography of Heaney, ‘tells of his life as a poet, from writing on his childhood bedroom wall to winning the Nobel Prize’.

Hello, StAnza!

We’re in the Byre Theatre in St Andrews. Press and Media Manager Annie Kelly has let me hot desk (‘hot sofa’?) with her sexy MacBook to report on last night’s St Patrick’s Day celebrations, which went with a wonderful swing. We started on the Bushmill’s supplied by the Irish Consulate at a 5pm reception, before moving to the Byre for the exhibitions’ launch – there are several going on around town, and this year’s artist in residence, the fabulous Jay Barnard, will be capturing the mood throughout on paper.

After a Few Words on the exhibitions from directorial team Eleanor Livingstone and Brian Johnstone, and remembrances of Byre experiences past from David Bruce, son of late poet George, Cahal Dallat booted up the accordian to play a few airs, telling me afterwards that he’d made his choices based on ones that have links with poets. We enjoyed a medley that included ‘Sally Gardens’ and ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’ among others. Delightful. Poet in residence for 2010, Kei Miller read a great poem about light, Anne-Marie Fyfe‘s pondered what it would be like to live in a house she sees from the train, and there were words from the Irish contingent through Minister for Health John Moloney, from sponsors Pagan Osborne and from the University’s Principal and Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson.

The first event! With the excellently shod Donegal man Matthew Sweeney and Galway based Moya Cannon! As John Moloney said in his speech, the Irish know how to party. Thus a very good beginning to an exciting weekend…

Missed yourself? Pop the kettle on and settle back, because with the StAnza podcasts, in the almost words of Aerosmith, you don’t have to miss a thing…

StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival

Tomorrow the StAnza Poetry Festival action begins! A few of us SPL folk will be decamping to Scotland’s East Neuk of Fife to take the poetic airs, and, as we did last year, will be blogging and snapping some moments of note. So stay tuned and spread the word – even if you can’t be there in person, you’ll be able to stay in the loop here, over at our Facebook page, with us on Twitter, StAnzaPoetry on Twitter and with the StAnza podcasts. We’ll have a wee info stall in the foyer of the Byre Theatre, so do pop over and say hello!

Best Scottish Poems 2009

Our Best Scottish Poems 2009 online anthology went live at Aye Write! Glasgow’s Book Festival on Sunday 7 March to a sell out audience. Edited by poet and novelist Andrew Greig, (who spoke of our loaded library trolley bearing a ‘a scuttleful of modern poetry’ for his perusal) and designed by Mary Hutchison, this year’s Best Scottish Poems includes work by John Burnside, Carol Ann Duffy, John Glenday, Kathleen Jamie and Tom Leonard.

Andrew also said:

…this selection is inevitably a reflection of my taste, interests and mood. A good number are by our best known writers – over the course of this reading, I have rediscovered they are best known for a reason. Others are relatively or completely new to me, and I’m grateful to the poets and the Scottish Poetry Library for that enlargement. There is always a danger of one’s taste narrowing and hardening over time, so it’s great to browse more widely and be delighted with something new, or be reminded of a writer one hasn’t read for years.

In his words: ‘Enjoy. I did.’

Treasure Troves of poetry

Close to the well-beaten paths of Harvard Yard with its formidable libraries, a number of bookshops continue to stake their claim as rich troves of poetry.

There’s the classic Harvard Book Store, which was offering free candy on Halloween, passed around by all its booksellers in imaginative literary costumes, including a stunning Edgar Allan Poe complete with Raven. With a tall bookcase full of anthologies plus another three which represent what is being taught here and which poets are currently teaching, it is a good starting-point.

The Harvard Coop is one of the best haunts for browsers. ‘Poetry? It’s right behind the Moleskines!’ It boasts traditional Harvard wooden chairs, or you can perch on high in the Coop café to read your new book – if you can get past the expansive shelves displaying an enticing range of current literary journals. It can be busy, but it’s a great place to linger over new discoveries.

For bargains, Raven Used Books is a welcoming basement with two of its bookcases given over to poetry. The famous one: that’s the Grolier, one of only two poetry bookstores in America (the other is Open Books in Seattle). Where else can you find so many volumes of poetry in one place? Students appreciate being in a place that has a history, unchanged since it opened in 1927.

Here the poets meet: one will come in and five minutes later, another. Some refer to it as ‘The Headquarters’, others speak of how much they feel encouraged here. Everybody from e.e. cummings to Paul Muldoon has frequented it, and portrait photographs hang high on the booklined walls. This is a treasure among bookstores, where the latest volumes are in stock. If the real life of contemporary poetry is in the small presses, then few of the conventional bookstores represent these, but the Grolier does.

When you want to visit an amazing treasury of modern poetry, then the Woodberry Poetry Room in the Lamont Library is the place to go. Unlike the more majestic and ostentatious rooms at Harvard, the Woodberry succeeds in removing any intimidation from the artform. It is simultaneously broad yet intimate, the only room in the world entirely designed by Alvar Aalto. Around its 1940’s turntables you can give your attention to the sound of the poet’s voice. The Woodberry honours a continuum, giving equal weight to the aural, the visual and the textual life of the art.

It’s a playful room, all about total pleasure: it allows for both the communal and the solitary nature of poetry. Here students gather to watch rare footage of great poets or attend live readings, and sound recordings of influential new work are made each month. Visiting poets are invited to sit at ‘The Poet’s Desk’ with its unsurpassed view of Harvard Yard. And an old cardboard box contains the sacred relic, a gleam of gold tinfoil around Robert Lowell’s cigar, presented to the Woodberry on the birth of his daughter.

Valerie Gillies

Valerie Gillies was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Bursary to put together a volume of collected poems and to write new work in America. She is currently based in Boston. This piece first appeared in Issue 6 of our Poetry Reader.

Reading in Bed with… Joyce Caplan

I once counted 87 books by my bedside.

This ‘cordon-literature’ had of course collapsed and the tally was done during the slow, serendipitous reassembling. I have now found shelving for the dispersal, but still near my bedside for when I feel bereft during the night and need their pages to raft me over into sleep. There is also a deep litter system of TLS and LRB for when a sudden urge prompts a need for re-reading an article about books I know I will never read or dead poets I have happily forgotten.

Upon my immediate bedside table I have always the inevitable poetry, a strong reading light and emergency peppermints (the chocolate is hidden behind the alarm clock). At the moment I am reading a book about cricket, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, a subject in which I have no interest, but it is set in New York, in which I do, and I am finding it riveting and am almost tempted to watch the Test Match but this feeling soon subsides to a mild twitch when the scores come on the news.

I read Ashes for Breakfast by Durs Grünbein, accompanied by the morning birdsong, and inhabit his surreal, harsh world before my morning coffee brings me into this one. He is an East German poet of startling originality. Another book, also given to me by my stepson, is Zbigniew Herbert’s Collected Poems, a satisfyingly fat volume that gives many delights and surprises. Compared often to Bishop or Auden, his verse combines the political and the personal with great lyricism and humour.

There are of course the unopened books I ought to read that gather dust; the well-worn thrillers (Sarah Paretsky and Henning Mankell) for 3am reading, and books given as borrowings by friends and looked forward to as a future shared pleasure. Recently my bedroom was redecorated and the painter, a pragmatic, phlegmatic Scot, queried the need for ‘all this shelving’. On seeing my stricken look of panic, he stoically painted around the empty shelves. ‘You’ll be keeping the books then.’ For once I didn’t reply.

In November 2009, the ineffable Joyce Caplan stood down after six years as Chairman of our Board, and many more years of sterling service to the SPL cause. This piece first appeared in our Poetry Reader Issue 5.

Podcast | Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry

Our latest podcast went live. It features Literary Editor for the Scotland on Sunday, author and cultural commentator Stuart Kelly chatting with our Ryan. They discuss the poet John Berryman and muse upon the current state of modern poetry, its future, the purpose of the critic and chew the literary cud.

LISTEN! | DOWNLOAD!

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The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry shortlist has been announced:

Jackie Kay for Maw Broon Monologues (performed at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow). A full-length performance combining rhythmic verse, music and theatre.

Dannie Abse for New Selected Poems 1949-2009: Anniversary Collection (published by Hutchinson 2009). A celebration of the 60th anniversary of Dannie Abse’s first collection After Every Green Thing.

Paul Farley for Field Recordings: BBC Poems (1998-2008) (published by Donut Press 2009). This work brings together Farley’s broadcast poetry for the BBC over a ten-year period.

John Glenday for Grain (published by Picador 2009). Fourteen years in the making Grain is at times delicately lyrical and at times playful or surreal.

Alice Oswald for Weeds and Wild Flowers (published by Faber and Faber 2009). This is a magical meeting of the visionary poems of Alice Oswald and the darkly beautiful etchings of Jessica Greenman.

Chris Agee for Next To Nothing (published by Salt Publishing 2009). Next to Nothing records the years following the death of a beloved child in 2001.

Andrew Motion for The Cinder Path (published by Faber and Faber 2009). Motion’s collection offers a spectrum of lyrics, love poems and elegies all exploring how people cope with threats to and in the world around them.

The winner will be announced at a prize giving ceremony in London on the 30 March. The Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry seeks to recognise excellence in poetry, highlighting outstanding contributions made by poets to our cultural life. Members of the Poetry Society or the Poetry Book Society are invited to nominate a living UK poet, working in any form, who has made the most exciting contribution to poetry in the past 12 months. The £5,000 prize has been donated by Carol Ann Duffy, funded from the annual honorarium which the Poet Laureate traditionally receives from H M the Queen.

Happenings 30: £12,000 & other poems!!

We’re not usually so lavish with the old exclamation marks, but Poets for Haiti at the Queen’s Hall on Sunday evening merits them. Raising £12,000 for the work of the Mercy Corps, almost 900 tickets and six full raffle books were sold. The poets drove the audience through the gamut of emotions, sometimes hilarious, sometimes pensive, always electric.

Ron Butlin got the crowd warmed up with a commissioned poem about Inspiring Edinburgh, and Gillian Clarke awed them with a lament for Haiti. Alasdair Gray charmed with a condensed history of Scotland, Liz Lochhead amused with her theatrical advice for telling a story and Aonghas MacNeacail managed to squeeze all three of Scotland’s languages into a 5 minute set. Next up, Frances Leviston read one tender poem, before Robert Crawford changed the mood again with his rousing ‘Clan Donald’s Call to the Battle at Harlaw’. John Glenday opened with a love poem inspired by the tin opener – not invented till 47 years after the tin can – and Imtiaz Dharker caused great merriment with her poem about being over the moon. Don Paterson ended the first half with a lovely poem in which he explains to his son what he does for a living in ‘Why Do You Stay Up So Late?’

After much interval jollity and flogging of raffle tickets for the Blackwell’s donated Wanderings with a Camera in Scotland signed by all the participants, John Sampson opened proceedings in an Amadeus-esque wig and whistle with Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, before Carol Ann Duffy drew the raffle. Jackie Kay opened the second act poets-wise, treating us to a sparkling performance;  first a hilarious imagining of Maw Broon getting acquainted with her nether regions in ‘Maw Broon does the Vagina Monologues’, then ‘Darling’, a heart-stilling elegy to her friend and fellow poet Julia Darling. Bill Herbert celebrated the stookie, Kathleen Jamie the Queen of Sheba and Rody Gorman poked fond fun at place names of the Highlands. Sean O’Brien responded to Liz Lochhead’s piece about the theatre, you couldn’t hear a pin drop when Vicki Feaver ended her set with a tremulous hymn, before Andrew Greig honoured his father’s tool shed.

Douglas Dunn, whose line ‘Look to the living, love them, and hold on’ from ‘Disenchantments’ was projected onto the Castle Rock as part of the Carry a Poem campaign, and which provoked a chap to propose to his partner, read a snatch from that poem, saying ‘I hope they won’t blame me if it goes wrong!’ Of course the curtain was brought down by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who read three poems, among them ‘Premonitions’, re-imagining her mother not dead, but youthful, alive. You can get a copy to keep, part of our collaborative Poet Laureate postcard series.

This was an evening of poetry unlike any other, featuring a line up of people who’ve never shared a stage before and may not again, uniting for a fantastic cause. Carol Ann Duffy has said it was “the largest, loveliest Scottish audience for poetry ever. The evening will stay with me all my life.” We tip our hats to that.

You can still donate to Mercy Corps by visiting their website: http://www.mercycorps.org.uk/