StAnza announces 2011 line-up

7 oktober 2010 To mark National Poetry Day, StAnza has announced its line-up of poets for its 2011 festival, to be held 16-20 March in St Andrews. The list includes Ciaran Carson, director of the prestigious Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the Queen’s University, Belfast; Julia Donaldson, the hugely popular children’s author and poet; Douglas Dunn, Scotland’s most eminent poet, who was awarded an OBE in 2003; poet, playwright and broadcaster Paul Farley; Selima Hill, who has been shortlisted for all three major poetry prizes in the UK; Chinese poet Yang Lian, who lives in London and was a guest poet to the Poetry International Festival, Rotterdam in 2009; and Fiona Sampson, whose latest collection Rough Music (2010) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize (Best Poetry Collection).

Other names on the list include Italy’s Antonella Anedda; Iraqi poet, Adnan Al Sayegh; Belgium’s sound and visual poetry group Krikri, and poets from the USA, Georgia and Australia. Scotland’s voices include John Burnside, Stewart Conn, Helena Nelson, Rab Wilson, Hugh MacMillan and Tom Pow.

Visit www.stanzapoetry.org for the line-up of more than 40 poets confirmed so far. News about more participants will be announced over the next few months on the website and via Facebook, Twitter and the StAnza blog.