SCOTLAND’S International Poetry Festival, StAnza, has unveiled details of its 20th year celebrations in Fife.
The annual festival gets underway next week with traditional Scottish singer Sheena Wellington opening the festival in St Andrews. She famously sang Robert Burns' A Man's A Man For A' That at the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and has previously performed at one of the early StAnza festivals and returns to celebrate the 20th year.
The festival lasts five days, from March 1 to March 5, and this year's first night is John Agard's "quirky re-visioning" of Christopher Columbus in Roll Over Atlantic. Agard takes on the voices of Columbus, The Atlantic Ocean, a native shaman and The Mighty Mosquito.
Writers attending StAnza include Alice Oswald, winner of the Costa Poetry Book prize and previous winner of the T.S. Eliot prize, Scotland's Makar Jackie Kay and Kathleen Jamie, winner of the Saltire Book of the Year Award among many others.
StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival is funded by Creative Scotland, EventScotland and Fife Council, with support from the University of St Andrews.
Tickets are on sale and can be purchased in person, by phone and online.
stanzapoetry.org
MY COUNTRY: A Work in Progress, a new play directed by Rufus Norris, written in "in the words of people across the UK" and interwoven by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, is the subject of a collaboration between the National Theatre in London and the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow and other arts organisations across the UK.
The play, which will run at the Citizens from March 28 to April 1, immediately following its London opening, is inspired by the recent EU Referendum. In the days following the Brexit vote, a team from the National Theatre spoke to people nationwide, aged 9 to 97, to hear their views, which have been combined with speeches from political leaders to create the new work
Cast for My Country: A Work in Progress includes Seema Bowri, Cavan Clarke, Laura Elphinstone Adam Ewan, Penny Layden, Christian Patterson and, playing the voice of Caledonia, Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumnus Stuart McQuarrie.
citz.co.uk
THE BORDERS Book Festival in Melrose has announced that global investment managers Baillie Gifford will become title sponsor of the festival, and will also sponsor a new non-fiction strand within the festival’s programme. Baillie Gifford takes over as title sponsor from Brewin Dolphin.
The festival is now in its 14th year and takes place in Melrose every June. It also hosts one of the UK’s top book prizes, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
The 2017 Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival will be held from June 15-18 at Harmony Garden in Melrose, with over 100 events.
bordersbookfestival.org
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here