By Team GRB

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GRB: Hey Ryan, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your new role as Artistic Director of StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival?

Ryan van Winkle (RvW): Hi, I’m Ryan, and I’ve written two poetry collections, worked in the Scottish arts scene for 20+ years, produced festivals and events around the world and generally love being surrounded by artists. My role as Artistic Director of StAnza has me working with a variety of poets, musicians, visual artists and other producers to create a brilliant and bustling festival.

GRB: So, what’s new at StAnza for 2024, and what are you are especially looking forward to from this year’s programme?

RvW: Since it’s my first year [as Artistic Director], I’m most looking forward to seeing how the car drives, you know? I feel like a teenager about to borrow Mom’s wheels for the first time, and it’s pretty exciting.

Beyond that, I’m keen to see how some of our experiments work – what will it be like having the Glasgow Zine Library with us making a collaborative festival zine through-out the festival, how will people feel following our meditation & poetry reading, what will people make of Long Distance, a unique phone-based installation? I’m curious and can’t wait for people to see what we’ve put together and to learn what they think.

GRB: StAnza happens over one weekend, what does the role of Artistic Director require of you, in terms of advocating for Scottish poetry over the course of the rest of the year?

RvW: In all honesty, I’m still learning what the role requires, and we’ve been very focused on the festival since I started in August. However, I know we want to advocate for Scottish poetry, we want to seek new talent and nurture those new Scottish voices while also celebrating the wealth of genius we have around us.

To that end, we’ve got the Young Makars programme to look forward to during the year, and we’ve got our wonderful partnership with the Edwin Morgan Trust that allows us to support poets at pivotal moments in their careers with our Poets in Residence project at the 2024 festival.

GRB: You’ve organised festivals and translation workshops abroad, in countries such as Syria, Pakistan and Iraq? What did you learn from those experiences, that you’ve found to be applicable to your role as Artistic Director of StAnza?

RvW: I learned too much from those intense and inspiring projects than I could ever hope to articulate – I met wonderful poets and collaborators, I saw passion and perseverance from organizers when plans went pear-shaped, I saw resilience, meaningful exchanges and amazing projects develop after the events were finished.

So, maybe one important thing I learned was that poets speak their own language to each other, despite differences in their native tongue. And when you put poets together to translate, to intimately speak to each other and to perform – the result can be enthralling and kind of magical. I believe that the feeling of collaboration and good will and care between poets can be transferred to audiences anywhere in the world.

I think that’s very applicable to StAnza and speaks to what our audiences hope for. Some of that experience will be on display during Round the World LIVE: Ukraine where young poets from Ukraine and Scotland will be sharing new translations of their poetry after some long-distance translating sessions.

GRB: What has surprised you the most, since you took on this role?

RvW: I was surprised by how much genuine love there is for StAnza around Scotland and the world. I’m truly lucky to have the opportunity to work with a festival that has such a strong reputation and dedicated audience.

And I was also surprised and delighted by how good our team is and by how patient and generous everyone I’ve been working with has been. There’s a lot of work involved in turning a festival dream into a reality, and we have a small but dedicated team plus, the incredible staff at the Byre Theatre, a cohort of wonderful volunteers and a brilliant board of Trustees. I’ve had to learn a lot on the fly, but I’ve been supported the whole way.

GRB: One challenge that poets frequently encounter, is the struggle to find time for their own practice alongside paying work – what advice would you give someone, about how you stay productive and creative in your own writing, while also delivering a role like Artistic Director of StAnza?

RvW: Ha! That’s a tricky question for me since I haven’t been doing a ton of writing, even before taking on StAnza. I’d been editing a manuscript and just waiting for a publisher, so I’ve given myself permission to go easy on creating new poems.

That said, unlike a novel, I believe there’s always time to write a poem and if one wants to come out, you just have to be there for it. So, don’t beat yourself up too much, trust the poem to come and be ready to catch it when it does.

GRB: You’ve been described as “an established figure within the poetry community” – to what extent do you feel part of an ‘establishment’ and what’s your approach to reaching outwith that boundary, to build with relationships with people who engage less with poetry (and poets!)?

RvW: I definitely don’t feel like a part of the establishment – I cut my teeth at The Forest Cafe in Edinburgh, a scrappy, volunteer-run, collective, free arts and events space masquerading as a vegetarian café, and I am still very loyal to that kind of non-hierarchical, community-based, open-access environment. Even though I’ve been around and doing art-y things for a long time, I’ve never had a senior position at a major institution or anything like that, so being a part of a beloved festival like StAnza with its own history and culture has been fascinating considering that, a lot of my previous work involved being on the other side of things – hustling for freelance work, pitching projects and events around the world and trying to create exciting new experiences wherever I could.

In terms of building relationships, I think my approach is multi-faceted. I think we can build up people’s confidence and appreciation of poetry by making sure they have access to high-quality work. We also want to platform work that will attract people interested in visual art, music, theatre or film – I see poetry as very much part of an artistic tapestry, and it’s important to showcase poetry alongside other art forms to give people a chance to experience it differently.

So, we’ve got ‘Long Distance’ [poetry readings by phone,
co-produced with Leigh Kotsilidis, featuring eight
Canadian poets], which is part reading, part installation – we have poetry in performance like in ‘Knead’ by Sean Wai Keung, or something more akin to stand-up poetry like ‘From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin‘ by Mouna Ouafik. And we are lucky to have the Loud Poets with us who have done so much for the performance poetry scene in Scotland and curate a very kinetic, welcoming slam.

GRB: Stanza is billed as Scotland’s ‘International Poetry Festival’, is there a balance to be struck between ‘internationality’ and the need to provide a platform for Scottish poets? How do you find that balance?

RVW: There definitely is a balance needed – I think we wouldn’t have a very exciting festival if it was just international poets or just Scottish poets programmed at StAnza. But, I also think neither of those festivals would be feasible to mount, so we find our balance quite naturally – we have partners and projects coming to us from around Scotland the world, and we have a bank of talent all around us so when it comes time to programme it feels quite organic that we’d have a mixture of both international and Scottish.

GRB: Stanza has committed to taking “proactive steps to involve artists, audiences and participants who have traditionally had less access to artistic opportunity – how are these plans coming along, and what more do you think needs to be done to make the Festival accessible to people from disadvantaged backgrounds?

RvW: This touches a bit on what I was saying regarding reaching out to people who typically don’t engage in poetry. At StAnza, we’ve got a free ticketing scheme which we’re working with local community groups to deliver, and we’ve got a pay-what-you-can price structure to reduce barriers to entry.

We’re also working in our communities and with partners to bring people into the festival who might not normally attend. Our work with Open Book, for instance, involves getting members of their groups access to living poets to converse about their work, and I’m positive they’re going to yield wonderful conversations and meaningful connections to these poets and their poems. I think one of the fundamentals is to take the fear factor out of poetry and poets and by giving people direct access I think we’ll be building relationships and fostering a life-long interest in poetry.

I’m also keen on making the festival as approachable as possible, and I think there’s a lot which can be done – from platforming diverse voices and programming considerately to reducing price points, to mixing art forms, to simply providing a welcoming and accessible environment.

GRB: On a related theme, one of the great challenges for poetry (and poets) everywhere, is building engagement and relationships with young[er] readers. What is Stanza doing to reach out to young people who may feel poetry ‘isnae for me’?

RvW: We’ll be working with school-aged young people as part of our Young Makers programme in 2024, and we’re looking at working with young and emerging producers to create events designed for younger audiences.

Overall, I think there are a lot of young people interested in poetry, who gravitate towards it but don’t quite know how to engage with it so part of our work in the future will be giving them permission to be a part of the festival – to make things, to see things, to comment and reflect with our support.

GRB: Like many organisations based around live events, StAnza faced something of an existential crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic – how has the Festival had to adapt (or how is it still adapting?) post-pandemic?

RvW: StAnza went hybrid during the pandemic, and we’re still committed to delivering a high-quality digital programme featuring live-streams and online exclusive content from around the world.

We’re constantly looking at how to improve the digital content we’re offering. I can’t say too much about how the festival has had to adapt (I’ve only been in post 6 months, and it’s all been new to me!) but it’s a very exciting realm and I’m a big fan of making things online. We’ve got more live content delivered virtually this year, like the Poetry Lit! Open Mic, the Round the World Live: Ukraine, and the Poets for Palestine events, so I’m excited by what’s possible in that space.

GRB: Finally, what’s on your wish-list for next year’s StAnza?

RvW: My wish is for more collaborative projects with our already established and outstanding partners like Moniack Mhor, Red Room in Sydney and Olomopolo Media in Lahore. And, in particular, I am keen to have more shows on the big stage and more immersive, quirky, multisensory events and installations throughout the festival. I can see it, we just have to make it happen!

GRB: Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions. We hope StAnza 2024 is a great success for all involved!

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