Saturday Night StAnza: The Renowned Festival Returns!

StAnza, or St Andrews Poetry Festival, dubbed last year “the country’s leading poetry festival” by the Times Newspaper, returned to the town this month in style. Organisers, Suzie Kirk Dumitru and Ryan Van Winkle, sought out poets with “gut-punch.”  Having seen Poetry Centre Stage: Gwyneth Lewis and Raymond Antrobus and the Stupid Sexy Poem Show with RJ Hunter, it is clear they delivered. 

Interviewing the poets, Gwenyth Lewis and Raymond Antrobus, they agreed that St Andrews should be considered one of the “poetry capitals” of the UK. Their description was apt, I found, as I made my way through the crowded auditorium towards my seat. The festival had been going on for two days now, the atmosphere was merry, as people rushed to the bar to get a drink before the events began.

Peter McKay, Scotland’s Makar, and esteemed staff member of the University, introduced the poets who would bare their lives before us on the stage. Is there anything more vulnerable, than to stand before a room of strangers and narrate the happiest, and the most miserable, periods of one’s life? I think about what it would take to muster up that courage, and feel safe in the audience.

“The last thing my mother said to me before she died was ‘Shut up!’” Gwyneth Lewis read from her newest collection, Nightshade Mother. Lewis, the first poet to grace the Byre’s stage on Saturday night, is an artist whose work has never shied away from the dark. Her newest collection tackles the intricacies of emotional abuse and chronic illness, their cruel mechanism and their lifelong legacy. “Shame is a contagious and sticky substance,” Lewis confided to us, her words were honest, raw and emotional - and her delivery superb.

“StAnza audiences are just the best,” Lewis said to me after the show. I wanted to know about her new collection Nightshade Mother - I asked her how she could do it, write these poems with that vulnerability and deliver them with such bravery. “I take care of myself,” she said. It was inspiring to hear trauma being spoken about with such candour, because I was reminded that, after all, this is what good writing can do - it can heal.

Raymond Antrobus, winner of the Ted Hughes Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize, filled the auditorium with laughter and feeling. Antrobus told us about his childhood, about his difficult relationship with his father. To quote his own poem, The Perseverance, “We lose our fathers before we know it.” We travelled with him then, to his childhood — “I remember sitting on his chest,” he recalled, as his father would read him bedtime stories. The vibrations from his deep voice would comfort the young poet who hadn’t yet been diagnosed as deaf. Antrobus’ work portrays life with disability without apology. His new memoir comes out in August — nothing has been added to my to-be-read so quickly.

Invoking the audience to join in, Antrobus read aloud a series of affirmations - “I broke up with people pleasing,” he said, met with a cheer of agreement. “You’re all liars!” he laughed.

Onto a vastly different event, I next saw The Stupid Sexy Poem Show! later on that evening with Glaswegian poet, RJ Hunter. What at first seemed like an hour of raunchy humour, whacky music and classic slam transformed into a poignant critique of transphobia and hatred in the UK. “I am just bleeding, it is just blood,” they revealed, discussing how this relentless oppression can change a person. The screen behind Hunter was filled with hate comments, some anonymous and some bearing names, they have received throughout their career, attacking their appearance, gender identity and very existence. Provocative poets such as Hunter force us to confront our own prejudices. Their art wants to know what our part is in this legacy of hate, and asks us to choose love.

The events were balanced perfectly. It seems talented writers make for talented speakers. They were taken over by our applause, for the poets and their work, their sign language interpreters, who gave a wonderful performance themselves, and the way they made us feel. These performances shall stay with me, as notes on my phone and books on my shelf. The atmosphere they created was a welcoming one, and I know I shall be returning next year to see what StAnza has to offer.

To any aspiring writers reading this, events like these should remind you that creativity is a worthy dedication. A life in the arts is possible, and if you’re prepared to give it your all, perhaps you’ll be back in St Andrews in the future, not in the library, but on the stage.

Photo by Jonathan Stock