CELTIC LINKS and Land And Ecology are the twin themes of the 2006 StAnza Poetry Festival which is now in full swing in St Andrews.

Readings, art exhibitions, music, master classes and lectures, as well as an excellent programme for children, are all included in the spectacular four-day event.

A host of poets with Celtic connections are reading during the festival, including Edinburgh Makar Valerie Gillies, Gaelic poet Donald MacAulay, Welsh Next Generation poet Owen Sheers and the rising Irish star, Leontia Flynn.

The second full day of the programme opened yesterday in St Andrews’ public library with the traditional StAnza discussion, when the poet and critic Robert Crawford joined panellists John Burnside, Julie Johnstone and Edna Longley to talk about the place of poetry in ecological thinking.

The Dead Poets session led by Galway Kinnell and David Kinloch presented the readings of two distinctive German voices, Rainer Maria Rilke and Paul Celan, while Scots poet Rab Wilson headed the bill at the lunchtime Poems, Pies And Pints programme in the Byre Theatre.

What, How Well, Why? was the title of the StAnza Lecture in Parliament Hall given by the leading poetry publisher, novelist and literary historian Michael Schmidt, while Owen Sheers led a workshop session focusing on the concepts of form, editing, structure and voice.

Last night, New Zealand-born Fleur Adcock and award-winning Jo Shapcott, the winner of the Forward Prize in 1998, joined forces for a reading in the Byre Theatre entitled Two Nations, while the late-night Poetry Slam in Broons Bar featured MC Tim Turnbull and slammers aplenty.

Following the success of last year’s expanded children’s programme, which drew bigger audiences than ever before, StAnza is presenting a varied and fun-filled mini-poetry extravaganza, specially for families and children of all ages, today and tomorrow.

An added bonus is that almost all of the children’s events are offering free entry.