The award-winning poet Don Paterson is to headline the StAnza international poetry festival in St Andrews this year.
StAnza, Scotland's International Poetry Festival lasts for five days from March 2 to 6 and features around 100 events.
The annual festival this year opens with a performance of Sea Threads: Comings and Goings/Sea Treeds: comins an gyaains.
This is a collaboration between Tommy Smith, the saxophonist and director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, and the Shetlandic poet and Edinburgh Makar, Christine De Luca.
Paterson, who last week won the Costa Poetry Award for his latest collection, 40 Sonnets, and twice winner of the T.S. Eliot prize is also appearing.
He is joined by recent winner of the Guardian First Book award and Fenton Aldeburgh first collection prize, Andrew McMillan. McMillan said: "Stanza is an iconic festival which has seen some of the world's best poets perform - I'm honoured and delighted to be there".
Eleanor Livingstone, director of the festival, said: "The countdown is now definitely on for this year's festival, with the stage set for another fantastic few days celebrating poetry and spoken word in its many forms.
"We're thrilled to have a wonderful programme which is bursting with some of the best and newest poetry talent and look forward to welcoming the world to St Andrews to enjoy this literary feast."
Other writers include Fiona Benson, joint winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, poet Jo Bell, winner of the Causley Prize and the Manchester Cathedral Prize in 2014, and Lemn Sissay, recipient of an MBE for services to literature and the first poet to write for the London Olympics.
UK headliners include Pascale Petit, Sean O’Brien, Brian Johnstone and John Burnside who will be joined by Nora Gomringer from Germany, Swedish poet Aase Berg, Jane Yolen and Thomas Lynch from the USA and Australian poet Sarah Holland-Batt.
StAnza traditionally focuses on two themes.
This year’s first theme will be Body of Poetry and its second, City Lines.
Tickets are on sale.
StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival is held every March in St Andrews and runs one-off events throughout the year. The festival has the Byre Theatre as its hub, and events elsewhere in St Andrews, including the Town Hall and St Johns, a mediaeval undercroft.
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