The 2022 Festival runs from 7 to 13 March, with Friday 11th being dedicated primarily to questions of exile, migration, belonging and tracing one’s roots, and will culminate in Poetry Centre Stage, an exciting triple bill from three major writers born respectively in Zambia, Jamaica and Syria, currently living in the UK / the US – Kayo Chingonyi, Safiya Sinclair and Nouri al-Jarrah. It takes place at the Byre Theatre Auditorium, Abbey Street, KY16 9LA. 

StAnza's theme this year is

Stories like starting points

StAnza 2022 will explore the opportunities and the pitfalls of stories, ranging over narrative poetry, prose poetry, re-writing old stories and imagining new ones, reportage, process / chance narratives, myth /epic; there will be poets who contest the power of narrative or of stories conventionally told, and those who experiment with it.

Nouri Al-Jarrah will read from four decades of work written in exile, including poems from A Boat to Lesbos and his most recent work, The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy to Regina his Beloved.

The latter epic poem awakens two extraordinary lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina, the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at rest beside Hadrian’s Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their unique love story.

TIckets are now on sale for all events. Click here to find everything that's on.

The Byre Theatre, Abbey Street, KY16 9LA  (also accessible from Byre Close, off South Street)