Headliners for the 2017 StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, have been revealed ahead of National Poetry Day on Thursday.
Scotland’s new Makar Jackie Kay, Robert Crawford, a poet, critic, biographer and professor at St Andrews University, and Jim Carruth, who was appointed poet laureate for Glasgow in 2014, are all on the bill for the annual festival which will take place from Wednesday March 1 to Sunday March 5 in St Andrews.
They will be joined by the likes of Vahni Capildeo, recent winner of this year’s Forward Prize, Scottish poets James McGonigal and A.B. Jackson, Sarah Howe, winner of the T.S Eliot prize for her first collection Loop of Jade, and previous T.S. Eliot prizewinner Alice Oswald.
Zambian poet Kayo Chingonyi and Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children’s writer, John Agard, both British-based, will also perform at StAnza 2017.
Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the event, and festival director Eleanor Livingstone said: “We plan to celebrate this and move into our third decade with a festival to remember including a special project to be launched in March.
“We look forward to revealing more details of the full programme, which is fitting of such a significant milestone, in the coming months.”
StAnza traditionally focuses on two themes which interweave with each other to give each annual festival its own unique flavour.
Next year’s first theme On the Road showcases poetry inspired by and reflecting on travel and migration, while the second theme The Heights of Poetry looks at how poetry engages with Scotland’s high places, and the poetic connections between Scotland’s hills and mountains and those elsewhere.
Over 60 poets will be taking part, along with many musicians, visual artists and film makers.
