Catharina Day

2013 StAnza lecture delivered by National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke

Poet cites elegiac poem Y Gododdin as shared cultural reference point of Welsh and Scots

The StAnza lecture given by Gillian Clarke, the National Poet of Wales started by referring back to a Britain when Brythonic was spoken throughout the land extending from Wales into the Midlands and through Cumbria as far north as Fife. This immediately…

Gillian Clarke, Liz Lochhead and Mark Doty among Stanza 2013 highlights

St Andrews poetry festival focusses on poetic forms and shared legacy of ancient Britons

The five days of StAnza has delivered its stimulating mix of poetry, masterclasses, workshops and slam with sorties into art, music, and sculpture along the way. Despite, the sudden closure of the Byre theatre which had become the central hub of the…

The story behind Arbroath smokies

Its name now protected by law, the Arbroath smokie is one of Angus's enduring food emblems

Nowadays in the Fit o’ the Toon, the area of land given to attract fishermen to Arbroath in the 1800s, there are still many artisanal fishmongers making smokies in their backyards to their own subtly different family methods.

Bringing HOPE to Angus: Hospitalfield's organic garden

New shop planned for the social enterprise in Arbroath

The Hospitalfield Organic Produce Enterprise by Arbroath is reaping the rewards of its successful community gardening project.

StAnza 2012 international poetry festival opens

Opening event explores Philip Larkin's relationship with jazz

Stanza, the St Andrews-based international poetry festival, has opened its doors for the fifteenth year, bringing together poetry, art and music leavened with learning, humour and good performances. Having earned a reputation for tight adherence to…

Wigtown Book Festival: Fergal Keane

Journalist and war correspondent on subjectivity, Ireland and Rwanda

Fergal Keane has just written Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima, about a little remembered battle which halted the Japanese in their progress towards invading India in 1944. But he did not talk about this book, although he talked of many things…

Wigtown Book Festival: Beyond the Arab Spring

Rosemary Hollis, Martin Bell, Robert Irwin and Robin Yassin Kassab

This year has changed many of us who only had a vague idea of the kings and dictators who have made life hell for many people in North Africa and the Middle East, suddenly we are much better informed as the electrifying events of the year have unfolded.

Tom Hodgkinson's Brave Old World of self-sufficiency

Wigtown Book Fair event by founder of The Idler

There is something very likeable about the journalist and publisher Tom Hodgkinson, founder of The Idler magazine who was appearing at the Wigtown Book Festival. He likes to look at life with a fresh eye and question whether we are all going about it in…

StAnza 2011 - Kevin Young and Gawain Douglas

International poetry guests and a reading of a 20th century classic

One of the international visitors to the 14th edition of the Stanza Poetry festival in St Andrews was Kevin Young, hailing from Georgia, US. His five published collections often take history and blues music as themes, but for this appearance he read…

StAnza 2011 – Festival round up

14th annual poetry festival combines both major and emerging talents

The StAnza International Poetry Festival 2011, now in its fourteenth year, gathered together an array of major and emerging talents. The themes were Timepiece and The Poet’s Ark. Both themes which encompass history and community, and the sense of…

StAnza 2011 - New poetry showcases impress

New Poets Showcase and New Writing North Showcase

Emerging poets had a chance to impress at Stanza 2011 with at the New Poets Showcase and New Writing North Showcase. Both of these small intimate readings provided a wonderful introduction to some inspiring and talented poets, many of whom we will…

StAnza 2011 poetry festival launches

US poet Kevin Young among programme highlights

The five day StAnza poetry festival opened in St Andrews yesterday, launching its varied programme of verse, art and music. Always a luminous affair amid the dreich days of March, the festival, now in its 13th year, brings poetic talent from all over…

StAnza 2010 - An evening with Seamus Heaney

Tickets for the highlight event of this years St Andrews poetry festival - StAnza - had been sold out for weeks, for Heaney has struck a populist chord with that minority group – poetry lovers. Ever since his first major collection in 1966 The Death of…

The grass is greener: why Scottish animals have the advantage over foreign livestock

Cows eat grass, as every school child knows. Except that it’s not always the case these days. In many parts of Scotland (thanks to all our rain) grass is what grows best and gives the animals that graze it a natural advantage.

Sour crabs and Scotch dumplings: lookin' for apples

Once every household had a repertoire of recipes to make the most of an annual glut. Now they are a year-round supermarket staple, yet rarely sourced from Britain, never mind Scotland. Catharina Day hunts for apples.

Seaweed and urchins - a modern Scottish food industry?

From skincare to carbon sequestration, detox to fertiliser, seaweed is more versatile than we realise, finds Catharina Day.

StAnza 2009 - Patience Agbabi and Carol Ann Duffy

Two contrasting women poets with a fondness for the sonnet form electrified the audience at their prime time reading on Saturday night at StAnza. Patience Agbabi on her third visit to the festival read from her collection Bloodshot Monochrome…