Bookworm: Writing wrongs

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 18:44

LET'S start with the bleedin' obvious. You can't put on a book festival without writers, no more than you can stage a Formula One race without racing drivers; they're the reason for the whole event happening, so it makes sense to look after them.

Astonishingly, a lot of book festivals don't. Novelist Amanda Craig highlighted the problem in a blog earlier this month which lambasted festival organisers who not only don't pay authors (Dartington was named and shamed for only offering a packet of shortbread instead of a fee). Others often don't pay for meals or travel expenses and even fail to stock their authors' books.

The number of writers rushing to post their own comments showed that she'd struck a chord. Val McDermid mentioned being paid with a painted pencil case, Sheena Pugh complained that her only payment at Hay was a white rose and a free meal, and others highlighted a heap of other indignities.

Scottish book festivals tend to look after their authors better than most (though Marcus Berkmann still shuns Edinburgh after an undisclosed slight a decade ago). Edinburgh's egalitarianism (even megastars get the same 150 fee as debut writers) and the friendliness of the Borders Book Festival at Melrose are routinely singled out for praise.

Last weekend's Lennoxlove Book festival raises the bar still higher. Not only is it run by the same efficient, author-friendly team behind the Borders Book festival, but it puts up its writers in the kind of style few writers are accustomed – a ducal mansion. Some might even get the chance to sleep in the same four-poster bed that Mary Queen of Scots once did. Which other book festival can offer that?

SATELLITE TOWN

WHILE the Lennoxlove authors were sampling the delights of gracious living in Haddington, across in Fife the organisers of StAnza were putting together a new model book festival that allowed poets from all round the world to gather at St Andrews without having to leave home.

The audience for Distant Voices gathered at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, were treated to 12 events brought to them by satellite link from venues scattered across the world: Tbilisi, Geneva, Stavanger, London, Mumbai, Vicenza, Skye, New York, Amsterdam, Ghent and Sacramento. The events were also webcast, thus reaching an even wider audience.

"There were glitches, mainly visual, with the first three events, and also, initially, with the webcast," admitted artistic director Eleanor Livingstone. "But those problems were overcome and I'm delighted by the results. For more than six hours we were webcasting poetry to the world, plus we were also giving poetry to our audience in St Andrews."

&#149 Excerpts from Distant Voices will soon be on the 2010 StAnza website www.stanzapoetry.org