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Thursday at StAnza kicked off with Rob A Mackenzie discussing Miroslav Holub, a Czech poet and immunologist who came of age, Mackenzie tells, us at the start of WW2. It was a fascinating talk, giving an insight into the brilliant mind of a poet who, in his own words was ‘open-minded about all the phenomena of experience, including the irrational’.

An early highlight of my day though was the second half of the Past/Present session, Helena Nelson’s gloriously cheeky and equally insightful introduction to the work of Ruth Pitter. Nelson began with the story of Pitter’s friend and somewhat fair-weather fan, C S Lewis, who praised her ‘serious’ poetry, but turned his nose up at her light verse. Pitter’s response to his criticism in a letter to a friend had me laughing out loud: ‘I can only hope he will never discover The Rude Potato’. Nelson left us hanging until the end to hear the aforementioned poem. It was more than worth the wait. I have already recommended it to several friends and family members.  

After that, I grabbed a quick 3-minute shot of inspiration from Anthony Anaxagourou who shared a writing prompt for ‘if you ever want to create language that’s pushing against logic or convention’. Don't we all? I can’t wait to try it out myself.

Helen Boden’s session took us on a virtual walk through a ‘fictive topography’ based on the Fife Coastal Path, a route I loved to wander before lockdown. Her beautifully curated poems and accompanying images struck a deep note within me, a sort of re-grounding in a landscape that has sometimes felt consigned to memory or even myth this year. Short phrases from the poems are still with me: ‘What if the movement isn’t progress?’ (Eleanor Rees); ‘I want to change my element’ (Jay Whittaker); ‘fishwife fretting’ (Helen Boden); ‘wind-kerned grasses’ (Autumn Richardson, Richard Skelton and Corbel Stone).

Not wanting to dwell for too long on missing Roger Robinson’s Round Table, it was on to Access All Areas with Jacqueline Saphra, a fascinating lecture that warrants more than a couple of hours of late night reflection to comment fully. Saphra argued with humour and sensitivity for the democratisation of both tradition and innovation in poetic form: ‘The inventors are gone. You can choose your inheritance’.

I snuck in a call to Dial-a-Poem before the next session. The phone rang for a good few seconds, making me oddly nervous (have I called the wrong number?). This novel form of poetry performance jolted me out of the now well-worn rhythm of tuning in to a livestream. I was treated to Volya Hapeyeva’s ‘Mandatory Happiness’, a poem I heard again later from the poet herself. It was puzzling, joyful and surreal; a fitting poem for the format.

For the headline act, Volha Hapeyeva read in Belarussian from her forthcoming collection In my Garden of Mutants, each poem followed by its translation in English by Annie Rutherford. Hapeyeva’s poems are populated with the vivid minutiae of life, which is used to heartbreaking effect in ‘13th October’, a poem about the lives of a mother and daughter who died in the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. The video backdrops of poet and translator contrasted, as did the style in which they each performed the poems, which drew my attention to the delicate act of cultural as well as linguistic translation, and the privilege of being exposed to work that crosses borders and would not be accessible to me otherwise.

Raymond Antrobus spoke to us fresh from a snow tornado in Oklahoma, another reminder that this is an unusual festival year. He was chatty as he told the stories behind the poems. It was as though he was drawing us into his confidence as he described how the absence of live performance has changed his poem’s development, before he shared new work with a note of curiosity in his voice. I was enchanted. This was not only brilliant poetry, but storytelling that filled the room – a difficult enough feat when poet and audience share the same physical space, but a vital kind of magic when screens and oceans divide us.  

I finished the day lying flat on my back (I’m sure I speak for many back-of-the-class fidgeters when I say there are some advantages to digital festivals) listening to Larry Butler, whose gentle but sturdy nature poems were a perfect way to wind back into myself after a day of leaping into other worlds. If I hadn’t had a blog post to write, I could have drifted off to his closing words: ‘Sweet dreams to everyone at the StAnza Poetry Festival’.

Ellie Julings

Our guest editors for the day, Burning Eye Books, interview some StAnza 2021 poets.

Burning Eye has a strong connection with StAnza. Many of our poets have appeared at the festival in the nine years we have been publishing including Jemima Foxtrot, Vanessa Kisuule, Paula Varjack, Kirsten Luckins, Ash Dickinson, Selina Nwulu and Scott Tyrrell. This year is no different, with three poets published by Burning Eye: Raymond Antrobus, Hannah Raymond-Cox and Desree.

We published Raymond Antrobus’ debut pamphlet in 2012 but it was his trailblazing Penned in the Margins' collection The Perseverance in 2018 that bagged him wide acclaim and a hat full of prizes. With a new collection due this year from Picador we asked Ray whether he felt a weight of expectation in following such a successful book:

"To be honest," he said, "I haven't thought about the noise around the success of The Perseverance. I've just aligned myself with the next book I had to write that felt urgent for me. It's called All The Names Given and loosely examines the life of my grandfather, who was a preacher, and my mother, as well becoming newly married, which was a surprise for me. The real theme of the book is time, history and intimacy. It's coming out with in September and I can't wait for it to be in the world."

Watch Raymond Antrobus' Poetry Centre Stage, which goes live on Thursday at 7:30.

Hannah Raymond-Cox’s collection Amuse Girl was one of the highlights of our 2019 list. As she prepared to MC this year’s StAnza Slam - Sleepover Style, we asked Hannah whether the last year had changed the course of her writing:

"The last year allowed me to really focus on what kind of poetry I wanted to write," she said. "I was coming to the tail end of my time as a Barbican Young Poet, where I had the chance to see a cross-section of poets’ work, and learn what I responded to creatively. I have been steadily moving into interactive and immersive work across all my artistic practices, and decided that I would want my poetry to do the same, to push boundaries of form. Audio and visual stimulus is very fun, but in a world where live arts have been severely impacted, I wanted to think about sustainable and accessible poetry that speaks to an audience hungry for narrative choice. With that in mind, I’ve been developing an interactive digital and physical poetry installation game centred on memory loss and grief with Jeff Tanton at Mediatonic."

Watch the StAnza slam on Saturday night, and check out Hannah's interactive poetry tour of St Andrews.

We will publish Desree’s book I Find My Strength in Simple Things in May. She will be performing in Sunday’s Poetry Café, a lunchtime slot regularly filled in recent years by a Burning Eye poet. We asked her what she felt were the best characteristics of the performance poetry world:

"The community," she said. "There is a sense of family within the performance poetry world that comes with seeing people, often, more than twice a week. That coupled with the fact that a lot of the time due to the nature of our work, it means that we tend to know a lot about each other. Another thing that I love about the performance poetry world is that, in the dark rooms, sometimes in the basement of pubs, is where revolution feels possible. Though it can often be described as an echo chamber (and don’t get me wrong, it can be), it can provide the fuel to go out into the wider world and demand change."

Check out Desree's Poetry Cafe, which goes live on Sunday at 1pm.