In partnership with the Edwin Morgan Trust, StAnza – Scotland’s International Poetry Festival – held an open-call for poets-in-residence for the 2023 festival. Two positions were available: 1) The Open Award – open to poets who are Scottish by birth or current residence; 2) The Translation Award – open to poets writing in a language other than English. The aim of the residencies is to support and promote marginalised voices in poetry.
Congratulations to JJ Fadaka and Gabriela Milkova who have been selected for the residencies! They will create a body of work that responds to this year’s festival theme – WILD: forms of resistance – with consideration of Edwin Morgan’s legacy. You can see them perform at StAnza on Sunday 12 March at 1pm – book your in-person tickets here and online tickets here.
Jj Fadaka is a writer, workshop facilitator and radical based in Edinburgh. Her writing explores the possibility that community, feminism, and love give us to create change. Her workshops draw on feminist and black radical traditions to create space for exploring our desires in a world without barriers. As a member of the Community Wellbeing Collective, she facilitates weekly creative writing workshops in Wester Hailes, Edinburgh. Jj uses poetry and art to speak to the political urgencies facing her local and global community whilst centring community and joy-making in mapping the struggles against these.
Gabriela Michele Milkova is a Macedonian poet based in St Andrews, Scotland. Her first collection, Врвот на ноќта/The Peak of Tonight, was published as a bilingual publication in Macedonia, 2016. Her work is textual, audial, and visual, and her most recent audial collection, Do You Know the Sea?, debuted on UK Radio, Supernova in 2020. She writes in English and Macedonian, and has had work published, aired, and performed across platforms in both languages.
Edwin Morgan Trust 