2024 Festival Programme
Stonehaven will be a-buzz with poetry when more than 80 poets from across Scotland, Ireland and England perform at our fourth Wee Gaitherin festival 2024.
Three days of readings will take place from Thursday-Saturday August 1-3 in the main function hall at Number 44 Hotel, Allardice Street, in the Market Square. The events will feature poets ranging from the renowned to the unknown, and from twenty-somethings to octogenarians, all on an equal footing - our program is out now!
Well-kent poets such as Hugh McMillan, from Galloway, Aberdeen’s Jo Gilbert and Julie McNeill – reading from her hugely popular new book ‘We Are Scottish Football’ – will share the stage with new and emerging talents such as Shasta Ali from Edinburgh, Rowan Heggie from Perth, and Genevieve Ray from Bedfordshire.
Alongside readings in English, Scots and Gaelic, there will be book stalls, book launches, publishers’ showcases and a heritage exhibition in the town’s library. The festival will culminate in a Saturday night ceilidh, which will be hosted by Halesom Farin and Stonehaven folk club.
In addition, there will be workshops on Friday and Saturday mornings at the festival venue, led by visiting Irish poet Jessamine O’Connor and Karen Macfarlane, and a one-hour reading by a group of writers on the theme of Resistance, Peace and Justice, at the War Memorial on Black Hill.
In keeping with the organisers’ ethos of making poetry accessible to all, all events will be free to attend, and a warm welcome is extended to everyone to ‘Turn up and tune in’ according to the festival motto. The organisers are especially keen to encourage more of the Stonehaven townsfolk to drop by to see what’s on offer.
Whether you’re new to poetry or a devotee, we invite you to join us. It’s free to attend, and our ethos of including as wide a range of poets as possible, and making poetry accessible to all – regardless of income – means there will be a great entertaining mix, from quiet to louder poets, sonneteers to outright performers.
We’re immensely grateful to all our funders, National Lottery-Awards for All, Aberdeenshire Council, Hugh Fraser Foundation, William Syson Foundation, and local business sponsors (Whittaker Engineering, Macphie Bakery and Firstdrive Cars) who have generously supported us to cover essential costs of staging the festival, pre-festival activities and subsidised the poets’ expenses.