Push the Boat Out

The next Push the Boat Poetry Festival will take place 21-23 November 2025.

Our last award-winning festival took place from 22-24 November 2024, with an ambitious line-up that blended poetry, performance and art in a vibrant celebration of words and creativity across 50 events and more than 120 artists! 

An event unlike any other, Push The Boat Out (PTBO) remains Scotland’s newest poetry and multi arts festival, with a growing year round programme and a strong community ethos. This year saw us collaborating with four new venue partners – The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Dance Base, Dovecot Studios and the Pleasance.

We are inspired by the vibrancy and range of contemporary poetry, hip hop, and spoken word from Scotland, the UK, and further afield. We give poetry a new platform by creating an environment where all variations of this vital art form are encouraged to grow, evolve and even collide as we bend boundaries across artistic forms. We explore fresh, inventive ways to bring poetry and audiences together by challenging perceptions of what poetry is, how and where it can be enjoyed and who it is for. 

Year-round, we run regular online writing workshops with internationally acclaimed poets and special guests from around the world. while Rock the Boat, our hugely popular open-mic night, takes place on the first Thursday of every month. 

Get in the boat, compañeros!