POETS and musicians from across the world will flock to St Andrews for this year’s international poetry festival StAnza.

Tickets are now on sale for the event which will take place from March 2 to March 6.

The full programme is now available online for the five-day event, featuring around 100 events – many of them free – ranging from readings, workshops, open mics, and a poetry masterclass.

Festival director Eleanor Livingstone said: “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.”

The programme boasts a strong list of contemporary poets from Scotland and the rest of the UK, as well as artists travelling from France, Germany, Sweden, Australia and the USA to appear at the festival.

Events include a collaboration between award-winning saxophonist Tommy Smith and Shetlandic poet and Edinburgh Makar, Christine De Luca.

The two will perform a self-styled Shetlandic sea chronicle entitled Sea Threads: comings and goings / Sea Treeds: comins an gyaains.

A headline performance will come from Scottish poet and jazz musician Don Paterson – who was recent winner of the Costa Poetry Award for his collection of poems 40 Sonnets.

This year’s festival will broach two themes, the first – body of poetry – encourages artists to explore poetry that engages the human body.

The second theme – city lines – ties in with Scotland’s 2016 Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design, and will allow the artists to celebrate the relationship between poetry and architecture in the historic setting of St Andrews.

The main hub of the festival will be the Byre Theatre, with other events happening across the town, including the mediaeval undercroft at St John’s house.

More information, tickets and a full programme is available at www.stanzapoetry.org