How it snowed on StAnza 2013, but poetry melted us

Dry, bitter snowflakes whirled in the streets of St Andrews, where StAnza International Poetry Festival merely gained in warmth and conviviality as the thermometer fell.  I'm just back from a fab four days in the north.

Highlights for me were Gillian Clarke reading from 'Ice', and explaining the principles of cynghanedd - and Eurig Salisbury reading in Welsh.  Mark Doty read a beautiful poem about a - dog.  Rare, that, but this one was perfectly weighted, humane, moving.  Wasn't really just about the dog.

I fell big time for 'Found in the Fields', Carrie Akroyd's work on John Clare.  You felt it was a collaboration.  
Alvin Pang was great, and over my last Poetry Breakfast I heard him reading in Chinese, and then the translation.  All the Poetry Breakfast discussions were absorbing.  I especially enjoyed listening to friends Dave Borthwick and Andy Forster talking with Mandy Haggith and Carry Akroyd about how poetry engages with the environment.  I had to rush from that one though, to beat my way through Arctic winds to St. John's Undercroft for my reading with Zoe Skoulding.
Which was a sell-out, especially appreciated as it was the official launch of my first collection from Oversteps Books, 'Not Lost Since Last Time'.  (Mandy Haggith told me later how she got the last ticket).  I had a lovely audience, and since I went first I was able to enjoy listening to Zoe's work too.
John Burnside's Masterclass was fascinating, and ran to time, though I could have taken more.  Dumfries and Galloway poet Em Strang put in a tremendously strong poem, as did Fife based poet Barbara Davey.

Jean Johnstone's book (collaboration with Jane Hirshfield)

In the middle of one busy day I walked very fast (to avoid hypothermia) down to the Westport Cafe where I met with artist Jean Johnstone, who had brought her handmade artists books, created in collaboration with poets, specially to show me.  We set the coffee and soup safely away to the other side of the table, and slowly unwrapped rough silk cloths to reveal the books.  When I picked up the first book, I gasped.  It had no weight at all, yet substance, like holding a songbird, with the same sense of both frailty and life pulsing.  Jean sets words and images into beeswax, and the books retain a faint scent of wax alongside the woodiness of handmade and hand-moulded paper.  Sensational.  And she's coming to Ludlow Fringe to do a special event  in June.  Don't miss.

From 'Unmapped'

And I loved 'Unmapped' an exhibition and poetry book by poet Rebecca Sharp and artist Anna King.

Gael Turnbull's 'The Edinburgh Poem'

And I played with Gael Turnbull's famous 'Edinburgh Poem' (slot the words together in magical serendipitous ways that always work).

And met Maureen Sangster and Paula Jennings, and admired their work on the collaborative Farlin project, involving artists and poets from Fife and Shetland.  And we all missed The Byre as a venue, and hope it'll be back before long, but the spirit of StAnza certainly remained in place. And John Hegley and Jacob Sam la Rose were just great, as was Erin Moure's twinkly humour and experimental mind.  I could go on, but it's my bedtime.

Basically, if you can get to StAnza next year, go.

Windows for Burns Night 2013 (there's just time)

Now we've, roughly speaking, survived 2012, the inspired combo of Hugh Bryden and Dave Borthwick are once again calling on living poets to help celebrate Scotland's best dead bard, Robert Burns.

Handwritten poems will fill the windows of the Globe Inn, The Coach and Horses and the Robert Burns House Museum from 14th January to 11th February, and as Mr Burns' birthday was on 24th January, there'll be plenty of time to raise a glass to his memory.  

Windows for Burns Night 2012 expanded rapidly into an international event with hundreds of poems being submitted from Scotland, Europe and the USA.  If you want to take part this year, you should write your poem in a bold black pen onto an A4 sheet of paper, scan/save as jpeg and email to roncandorapress@gmail.com by Monday 7th January.  

A ballot of Globe Inn customers selected one poem written by Kelloholm poet Kris Haddow which has been engraved on a window pane in the pub.

And here's the original, by the Man himself.

Poem of the 18th century Publican: Robert Burns, you're bard!

...by Hugh McMillan.  Well, who else?

 

The sun was shining on Dumfries, and I was tempted out a-Poem Hunting again with my trusty point-and-shoot. 

Inside the Coach and Horses on the Whitesands lurk short poems built on dreadful puns; Jackie Galley's marvellously strange thoughts on the Gulls of Dumfries;  Pippa Little's feline first footer...

I walked up Bank Street and back past The Stove, which already had a few window-readers.  So I moved to the next window and this time I read Chrys Salt's poem about Angus McPhee.  I read Roger Hutchinson's book at Christmas, and there's a wonderful blog too, written by artist Joanne B. Kaar http://joannebkaarbakersbotanistswhalers.blogspot.com/ Thanks Chrys.

 It really was a crisp and lovely day.  Through the narrow vennel to The Globe, which is packed with poems.  Where to start - Sarah Hymas (love this one), Josephine Dickinson, Polly Atkin, Rebecca Sharp, Angus MacMillan...  No sun down by The Globe, but I stood there freezing and reading.  So did a couple of other passers-by.

I warmed up on the way across to Burns' house.  Swarms of escaping schoolchildren packed the street end, while I read poems by Mike Barlow, Stephanie Green (very witty - see below), Jane Routh, Vivien Jones, JoAnne McKay, Fiona Russell and many more excellent verses. 

What fine places to place fine poems.  Thank you, Hugh Bryden and Dave Borthwick, who have probably seen enough melinex to last them till next January.

And I still haven't had time to read them all.

Windows for Burns - poems all over Dumfries

It's January in Dumfries.  Which means the wind whistles through the streets, and it's nearly Robert Burns' birthday.

He would surely raise a glass to see the windows of some of his favourite hostelries covered in poems. 

On Friday afternoon I took a camera to find poems on windaes. (It was windae all right). And a cheerful man was holding onto the roof of his market stall with both hands. "I'm surfing!" he cried.

'Windows for Burns', invented by artist, poet and publisher Hugh Bryden and Glasgow University lecturer Dave Borthwick, expanded rapidly into an international event.  Hugh and Dave invited contemporary poets from Scotland and as far afield as the USA, Sweden and all over Europe to submit their own work for display as window poems, and received hundreds in response.

Tucked away around the participating venues, see below, you'll find poems from Jen Hadfield, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, Jean Sprackland, Andrew Greig and many other fine poets.  Hugh (who must be travelling even faster than the wind through Dumfries this month) even zoomed round Primary seven pupils at Heathhall, St Teresa’s, Loreburn, Holywood and Shawhead Primaries, who also have their window poems displayed.  How good is this?

So go poem-hunting. Windows for Burns is out there till 31 January, and you can find poems in

• The Globe Inn
• The Stove on the High Street
• Robert Burns House Museum in Burns Street
• The Coach and Horses on the Whitesands

And as part of the Big Burns Supper event in Dumfries 27th and 28th January, 30 of the finest poems will be projected onto The Stove, to mark its opening as Dumfries' new arts centre.  Have a poem and a pint with the Bard.