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It's not every day you find yourself holding a ten thousand pound artwork. A ten thousand pound artwork which could go up in flames at any moment.

But that's how I found myself on Wednesday night at the opening of the Stanza poetry festival in the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, clutching a life-sized head of Robert Burns made out of matches.

David Mach, its creator, was suitably blasé when he handed it over.

He's made several of these matchstick creations - an interesting development considering he recently quit smoking.

I asked if he'd had any disasters. None, he said, apart from the time he was working on an exhibition and laid out ten matchstick heads on a snooker table in his workshop.

Unfortunately, a fellow artist welding set off a spark which lighted every head one by one. Too bad he didn't have the cameras running at the time.

Fortunately, the Stanza launch was a lot less eventful.

I didn't drop the head on live television - although there was a spare.

The First Minister stayed inside to avoid any photos alongside anyone's flaming head.

And David Mach lit Burns' chin with the minimum of fuss (unlike a recent Pittenweem Art Festival where he insisted on holding the head while he set fire to it!)

The whole thing was over in 30 seconds, with the scorched head going on display alongside the unscathed head for the duration of the festival.

Meanwhile Stanza meant a reunion for Annie Boutelle and Stephen Crosby, who both studied at St Andrews in the 1960s.

Annie is now a published poet and a senior lecturer at Smith College in Massachussets and Stephen lives and works in Canada, but both recalled as students attending a session given by Hugh MacDiarmid in the town.

This week they're among 80 poets who've come from as far afield as Canada, the US and New Zealand - a far cry from the first Stanza which was just a handful of poets in the town's art centre.