Hey Poets/Publishers/Friends of the Wee Gaitherin,
This year’s Wee Gaitherin is a few months away yet, 1st to 3rd August 2024.
The format will be broadly similar to last year’s which we felt was an improved model, with bigger breaks, no overlapping events and plenty of time for recreation and/or socialising.
This year the festival will start on Thursday 1st August, and the focus that day will be poetry performances from North-east poets and an opening shindig. On Friday the festival will run from 11am till 10pm and on Saturday 12 noon till 6pm, so that we can have dinner, followed by a farewell ceilidh.
To ensure as equitable a way as possible for poets/publishers to get involved we are setting a submission window of 2 weeks, from 8am Sunday 21st April to 11pm Sunday 5th May for poets or publishers, with their stable of poets, to put themselves forward. Only submission application forms received during this time will be considered.
We must emphasise at this point that although we fully intend to fund travel, accommodation and some reading expenses for poets, our funding is not yet in place so we cannot yet give you a guarantee of this.
To apply, please download the submission application form from our website link, fully complete it, and return the form with the following in the header of the email 'Festival 2024 Submission’ to: weegaitherin@gmail.com
If you have an idea for an activity, alternative form of performing poetry, or a workshop, please add that into the ‘Anything else you’d like us to know?’ box on the submission application form.
Please note however, that our priority is to give as many poets as possible a reasonable opportunity to perform (usually 12-15 minutes per poet) so there may be less emphasis on activities, alternative poetry performance proposals and suggestions for workshops, and therefore, depending on how many poets put themselves forward it may not be possible to consider all or any other types of proposals.
Once the submission window is closed the Wee Gaitherin Charity Trustees will meet to decide how many poets or alternative proposals we can reasonably accommodate. This also means we cannot guarantee that everyone will be allocated a reading slot within the program.
NB direct approaches about a reading slot/alternative proposals either in person, by phone or personal email to any of the trustees will not be considered.
We very much look forward to hearing from you!