Stanza’s story continues
Stanza 2022: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival
Various venues, St Andrews and online
Scotland’s international poetry festival has emerged from the pandemic looking a little different, with a new director, some new venues and a hybrid model. The feeling in St Andrews, however, is one of relief to be back in person listening to poets read and talk about their work.
The festival launched in fine form on Wednesday night, with readings from Kathleen Jamie, Jen Hadfield, Hannah Lavery and Peter Mackay, reminding us of things we have enjoyed from Stanzas past. However, new director Lucy Burnett has also shaken up some of the festival’s traditions, bringing in the idea of “intervention rather than cel
ebration”, and foregrounding thediscussionofissuescentral to poetry.
This year’s theme, Stories Like Starting Points, links the festival to Scotland’s Year of Stories and provides a starting point for debates about theplaceofnarrativeinpoetry. Thingsreallytakeoff,however, whenthewritersstopdiscussing the pros and cons of narrativeanddiveintothestories.
So, we learn that Hannah Lowe, who won this year’s Costa Award for her poetry collection The Kids, has been motivated throughout her writing career by the story of her father, a Chinese Jamaican who came to the UK in 1947. We meet Yousif Qasmiyeh, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, and Gezim Hadjari, who escapedthealbaniandictatorship to live as an exile in Italy, writers who carry not only their own stories but those of their families and, perhaps, their nations.
We get a preview of Billy Letford’s “verse novel in progress”andhearrobinrobertson read from The Long Take, his verse novel about a US war veteran with PTSD, the first poetry book to be shortlisted forthebookerprize.androbert Crawford tells the story of Ezra Pound and his crucial role as a translator and editor. Among these stories old and new, the story of Stanza itself is still being written.