London launch for Whatever You Do, Just Don't

London launch of ‘Whatever You Do, Just Don’t’, jointly with Mat Riches, who’ll also be launching his pamphlet, ‘Collecting the Data’, Tuesday 7^th November at The Devereux pub (7p.m. to 10p.m.). Free entry!

This is a HappenStance/Red Squirrel event with a rare chance to meet both publishers in person (Sheila Wakefield and Helena Nelson), plus readings from three exceptional guest poets: Maria Taylor, Hilary Menos and Eleanor Livingstone.

Thank you, Eleanor!

Now that Eleanor Livingstone’s stint as Director of StAnza is coming to an end, I’m sure there are many people who are better qualified than me to provide an overview of her long-term contribution to the festival’s development.

However, as a poet who read at StAnza in 2019, I just wanted to put on record my thanks to her. During my days in St Andrews, I was struck not only by the scale of the event and by the countless details that were required to ensure its smooth running, but also by Eleanor’s capacity to pause and treat every individual poet as a person. Moreover, her love of the genre shone through at all times. It’s no exaggeration for me to state that she played a huge part in making StAnza a magical experience.

In other words, thank you, Eleanor! I now hope you get to enjoy the festival from the other side of the fence (and without quite as much stress) in 2022…!

Tasting Notes at Stanza 2014

Regular readers of Rogue Strands might recall that Tasting Notes was featured at Stanza 2014 as part of an exhibition titled Poem in a Bottle - Poet and winemaker Matthew Stewart's poems uncorked, whereby individual poems from Tasting Notes were available for the taking throughout the festival, straight from otherwise empty wine bottles, in various locations around The Byre Theatre.

Well, Eleanor Livingstone (the director of Stanza) has very kindly forwarded to me a series of photos of the exhibition that were taken during the 2014 festival but only reached her this year. Here's one of them:

There are some lovely artistic touches that have been applied by the photographer, Jacqueline Skelton, and I'm very grateful both to her and to Stanza for permission to publish her work here. It will also be appearing on the wall of my study, that's for sure!