Poetry Parnassus

It’s not all going to be sport in London this summer. The Southbank Centre are hosting Poetry Parnassus from 26th June to 1st July, the UK’s largest ever gathering of the world’s poets. If you are going to be in or near London later this month, be sure not to miss this huge turn out of poets from across the globe – more than 200 and as far as possible one to represent every olympic country – as they give readings and masterclass workshops. The line up includes big names such as Simon Armitage, Seamus Heaney and Wole Soyinka along with many others from far and near who have taken the StAnza stage, such as Nikola Madzirov from Macedonia and Tusiata Avia from Samoa who both took part in StAnza 2012, two of our previous Poets in Residence, Kei Miller representing Jamaica and Bill Manhire from New Zealand; and from earlier festivals Canada’s Karen Solie, Soleiman Adel Guemar from Algeria, Yang Lian (China), Pia Tadrupf (Denmark), Jack Mapanje (Malawi), Imtiaz Dharker (Pakistan) and Jo Shapcott representing Britain. You can see the list of some of those already chosen here .  More names have been added recently to that list, however the Poetry Parnassus team are still looking for suggestions for a few more countries, such as Liechtenstein, so if anyone has any ideas, they’d be pleased to hear them.  There will be the chance to get involved with over 100 free events and activities, full details of which can be found on the Poetry Parnassus website. The programme includes on Tuesday 26th June a World Poetry Summit at which StAnza’s director Eleanor Livingstone will be taking part to talk about StAnza’s digital festivals and events.

Tusiata Avia at StAnza 2012 (photo by Al Buntin)

World Book Day, 23rd April

Poetry Breakfast at StAnza 2012 (photo credit John Starr)

Today is the  ‘World Book and Copyright day’ established by UNESCO (not to be confused with ‘World Book Day’ on 1^st March).  According to the United Nations webpage, 23^rd April was chosen as the day in 1616 on which Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died, and it is also the anniversary date of the births and deaths of other acclaimed writers through the centuries.  Today is also the 80^th anniversary of the Index Translationum being set up in 1932, a bibliography of more than 2,000,000 works translated around the world.  UNESCO’s Director General, Irina Bokova, issued the following message for World Book and Copyright Day 2012:  “Translation is the first step towards the rapprochement of peoples, and is also a decentralizing experience, teaching diversity and dialogue. Translation is one of the driving principles of our creative diversity, which enriches each language through contact with all the others.”

Of course translation is always given a strong focus at StAnza, as part of our Border Crossing strand and elsewhere, introducing our audiences to all the wonders of poetry in other languages, and our ‘Translating the Image’  Poetry Breakfast on Sunday 18^th March (which was webcast live), was for many a highlight of this year’s festival.

One of the translated poets taking part in StAnza 2012 was the Palestinian poet and journalist, Ghayath Almadhoun, who grew up in Syria and now lives in Sweden. The International Literature Festival in Berlin is marking today’s World Book Day by appealing for a worldwide reading for freedom and democracy in Syria.  StAnza isn’t aware of any public readings taking place in Scotland today, but if anyone is joining in, they are asked to contact worldwidereading@literaturfestival.com.

A survey by any other name ….

We really do appreciate getting feedback from everyone who had any experience of StAnza this year, so whether you came to the festival or not, whether you went to dozens of events, or only caught a glimpse of what was happening while you kept company with the poem panel waiting for a train at Leuchars, enjoyed one of the poetry empire biscuits which someone gave you, or caught a bit of one of our live webcasts online, then please do click on this link and complete and return this short StAnza 2012 survey .  Your opinion matters to us!

In S T E R E O S C O P E

Poem by Karen Doherty inspired by photo by Roman Koblov

One of the installations for StAnza 2012 as part of our theme of The Image and focus on photography was a collaboration with STEREOSCOPE magazine. Created by St Andrews University students, the magazine draws on the photographic history of St Andrews and works with the support of the University’s special collections. For this installation, poets were invited to respond to specific of the images in the magazine and the following poems produced during the project were projected along with the images. The two photographs which prompted most of the poems submitted were by Jeremy Waterfield and Roman Koblov. Here are the poems.

I N S T E R E O S C O P E

Lavinia Greenlaw wins the Ted Hughes Award

Congratulations to Lavinia Greenlaw who won the Ted Hughes Award for her sound work, Audio Obscura. Lavinia was StAnza’s Poet-in-Residence this year.

Judges Edmund de Waal, Sarah Maguire and Michael Symmons Roberts presented the award, which was founded by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and is run by the Poetry Society.

Taking place at Manchester’s Piccadilly station in July 2011 and at London’s St Pancras International station in September / October 2011, Audio Obscura is a sound work in which the listener enters interior lives and discovers, somewhere between what is heard and what is seen, what cannot be said. Audio Obscura was commissioned and produced by Artangel and Manchester International Festival, and Lavinia collaborated with sound designer Tim Barker to produce the work.

The judges  described Audio Obscura as ‘a groundbreaking work that fully captured the spirit of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. The judges felt this was a particularly outstanding year with six stellar entries on the shortlist’.

Nice to note here that two other members of that shortlist were at StAnza: Christopher Reid and Robert Crawford.

Read more about the award here

StAnza out and about

Hugh MacDiarmid's Scotland at St Andrews Bus Station during StAnza 2012

 Thanks to our Creative Scotland ‘One Step Forward’ funding, StAnza certainly stepped out this month around St Andrews and beyond. As well as the poem panel at Leuchars Railway Stations, two poems, ‘Scotland’ by Hugh MacDiarmid and ‘St Andrews’ by Robert Crawford (thanks to permission from Carcanet Press and the Random House Group respectively) have been on show in window panels at the St Andrews Bus Station, our annual Poetry Walk followed a path suggested by the Book of St Andrews, the Poem Pedlar engaged with people all round town and the sun shone wonderfully on our stone carver working in the garden outside the Byre over the glorious festival weekend (which seemed to turn StAnza into a summer festival) where the whispers of this year’s specially commissioned audio  installations added their own soundscape. StAnza is keen to see photographs of people encountering words and text around town during the festival, so do send your own to us at info@stanzapoetry.org and we’ll be happy to publish some of them on this Blog.

Stone carver John Neilson at StAnza 2012 (photo credit Al Buntin)

Even more mysterious at MUSA

StAnza at MUSA, photo credit Amy Dale/Musa

Some weeks ago our guest blogger Amy Dale from MUSA (the Museum of the University of St Andrews) invited poems responding to some of the objects from the Museum’s collection, and some of the resulting poems are now on show at MUSA, scattered through the cases to encourage visitors to take a good look round to find them all. The Museum can be found at 7a The Scores,St Andrews, the opening hours are presently 12 noon to 4.00pm Thursday to Sunday but once we move into April, their longer summer opening hours begin. And don’t miss checking out the wonderful views out over the sea at the back of the Museum.

Book Group for StAnza 2012

Ever wished you had a chance to read and discuss poetry before you hear the poet read? If so, read on. Every March StAnza’s spring festival brings a wide range of poetry to St Andrews, presenting poets past and present from around the world. In 2012 as a collaboration between StAnza and the Open Association at the University of St Andrews, a new Book Group will meet before the festival to read and discuss some of the poets who will feature at StAnza 2012, including Michael Symmons Roberts and Kathleen Jamie.

Robert Crawford, one of Scotland’s leading poets and currently Professor of Modern Scottish Literature, and PhD students from the School of English at the University will lead three early evening sessions from 5.30pm-7.30pm on Wednesdays 1^st, 15^th and 29^th February in the Conference Room at St Katherine’s West at 16 The Scores, St Andrews KY16 9AX. For more details contact Ruth Harris or Debbie Wilbraham on 01333 462275 or  open.association@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Forward Poetry Prize Winners Announced

St Andrews has much to celebrate in the Forward Prizes for Poetry this year.

Our congratulations to StAnza regular John Burnside, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews, whose Black Cat Bone won the prize for Best Collection last night; and also to StAnza volunteer Rachael Boast, who studied for a PhD in Creative Writing at the university, and whose Sidereal was a richly deserved winner of the prize for Best First Collection. The prize for Best Single Poem was awarded to the late R. F. Langley for ‘To a Nightingale’.

 

Rachael will be reading at the West Port Book Festival on Saturday, 15 October, and we are delighted to announce that she will also be appearing at StAnza next March.

 

A full list of the poets for StAnza 2012 will be published on our website later today.