Reimagining Home: Michael Mullen & Sree Sen
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Reading from and discussing their debut collections, Sree Sen and Michael Mullen explore community, identity and questions of home.
Cracked Asphalt seeks to untangle the strings of guilt Sree found herself wrapped in after her move from Mumbai to Dublin, while Michael’s Goonie considers how we form community and how community, in turn, forms us.
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Takeover: Glasgow City of Poets
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Join award-winning Scots poet Keeks Mc for a multimedia performance bringing together poetry, music and visual art, showcasing how personal experience is powerfully and poignantly conveyed through work with endangered languages.The Glasgow City of Poets collective will illustrate the cultural richness brought by diversity of language and the importance of language conservation.
Get TicketsDramatic Readings: A Workshop with Cheryl Martin
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Cheryl Martin is a poet and theatre-maker. Her work spans a range of genres and artforms, and she has written and directed a number of award-winning plays. In this women-only workshop, led by Cheryl, we’ll be exploring the intersections between theatre and poetry, and looking at techniques to help you create distinctive voices when writing poetry.
Get TicketsPerfume Consultations
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Inspired by literature, music and life events, Lush perfumes tell stories and evoke reactions. Drop by for a one-to-one perfume consultation, and to hear the stories and inspirations behind Lush’s evocative scents.
Ian Hamilton Finlay – The Arcadian Dream Garden
Saturday 22nd Nov, Sunday 23rd Nov
11:00 am - 8:00 pm
Join us at a special exhibition to celebrate the centenary of Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925–2006), one of Scotland’s most distinctive and internationally recognised artists and poets. Known for his poetic, philosophical and often playful approach to art, Finlay is best known for his remarkable garden, Little Sparta. This exhibition allows us to celebrate that work beyond the boundaries of the garden.
Supported by the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Tinderbox Collective: Playing Poetry
Saturday 22nd Nov, Sunday 23rd Nov
11:00 am - 8:00 pm
Come and try this playable game installation influenced by the poetry of Edwin Morgan and other technology-inspired poets. Created by young game designers from Tinderbox Games Club over two months, the work touches on themes of technology and poetry in various forms, and features art, audio, custom controllers, set, and story designed collaboratively by the group. The young people will also be demonstrating their game on Sunday’s Gaming the System panel.
Temporary Autonomous Poetry Zone – A Flotsam Flourish
Saturday 22nd Nov, Sunday 23rd Nov
11:00 am - 8:00 pm
More Fun With Games invite you to join us for a game of playful, palimpsest, poetic perambulations. A self-guided and paced immersive experience via our mobile web app for you to discover detritus and hidden gems. Unmoor yourself and drift on the currents of our Dérive, wander and wonder. Perhaps you might discover some prizes at the end of our treasure trail?
Calm Seas with Mobile Massage
Saturday 22nd Nov, Sunday 23rd Nov
11:00 am - 8:00 pm
Need a breather between events? Drop an anchor at the wellness corner and let Mobile Massage & Wellness work their magic. Their expert therapists specialise in stress-busting seated massages, the quickest way to melt tension, recharge your energy, and sail smoothly through your weekend.
Holding On and Letting Go: Isabelle Baafi & Jessica Traynor
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Join Isabelle Baafi and Jessica Traynor for poetry which explores relationships, grief and self-determination.
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Framed by the story of escape from a toxic marriage, Isabelle’s Chaotic Good asks how we are made, how we get lost and how we find new selves, while Jessica’s New Arcana explores grief, bad boyfriends and the power of female friendship through readings of the Tarot and Tim Burton movies.An Open Book Tour of Scotland
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Join Open Book writers from across the country for an hour packed with humour, story-telling and words to make you think. You’ll hear a mixture of individual work and collaborative poems responding to ideas such as Envy, Obsolescence, The Road Less Travelled and many more.
Get TicketsTakeover: The Shore Poets
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
The Shore Poets are an informal but durable collective who have been providing a platform for poets since 1991. Each month, the collective showcases two poets alongside musicians, capping it all off with the legendary lemon cake raffle! Prepare to be dazzled by the brilliant ecopoetry of Karen Solie and Tim Cresswell, and groove to tunes from The Self-Righteous Brothers.
Get TicketsVersus Versus
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Building on the work of decades of disability justice advocacy, the anthology Versus Versus, edited by Rachael Boast, showcases 100 disabled, D/deaf and neurodivergent poets, offering a poetry of assertiveness and immense vitality.
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Join poets Polly Atkin, Pascale Petit and Nuala Watt as they read their own poems from the anthology, as well as sharing related work. BSL interpreted.The Scottish Poetry Choir: A Taster
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Come along to this taster session to find out what it’s like to be part of Scotland’s first ever spoken word choir!
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In this workshop, Anita Govan, the Scottish Poetry Choir’s founder, will guide you to develop a collaborative spoken word performance – with a flashmob of the piece taking place at the end of the workshop!Top Doll
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Karen McCarthy Woolf’s novel-in-verse Top Doll is an innovative and exciting tale told from the perspective of a collection of antique dolls…
In this scratch performance of Top Doll, we’re delighted to present a brand new collaboration between Karen and the multi-instrumentalist and performer Kerensa, whose work moves between a number of genres, including opera-inspired pop.
BSL interpreted.
Get TicketsWalking through the Unseen World, with Anthony Capildeo
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Join award-winning poet, Anthony V. Capildeo for this experiential poetry walk through Holyrood Park. In addition to reading their own poems and work by others, Anthony will be bringing copies of poems to share, and will invite you to address poems to the more-than-human world around you. See our website for information on where to meet.
Online Double Bill: Between the Historical and the Imaginary
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Vidyan Ravinthiran’s Avidya and Arundhathi Subramaniam’s The Gallery of Upside Down Women map a world trying to find its axis in a season of change. Join these two poets online as they read from and discuss their luminous latest collections, the forgotten histories they dissect and the new worlds they point towards.
Get TicketsWomen Speaking Volumes in Verse
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
‘Women have always been 50% of the population, but only occupy around 0.5% of recorded history’ (Bettany Hughes, 2016) — with only a fraction of those the stories of black and brown women. But women have long been telling the tales of our lives.
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Come and hear multi-talented poets and artists Cheryl Martin, Raman Mundair and Rommi Smith read and talk to Sharmilla Beezmohun about their activist writing lives.Stepping Into the Surreal: Dean Browne and Caleb Parkin
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Join two tellers of strange tales and blurrers of boundaries in this event chaired by Luke Kennard. Dean Browne’s debut After Party and Caleb Parkin’s second collection Mingle share a delight in the surreal and a deliciously dark humour.
Get TicketsBeyond the Page: Ekphrastic Poetry with Nick Makoha
3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
In The New Carthaginians, Nick Makoha, shortlisted for the 2025 Forward Prize, draws on Jean-Michel Basquiat’s ‘exploded collage’ style. In this workshop, Nick will guide participants in using visual art to inspire and transform poetry, exploring how art can enhance structure, rhythm, and creativity in writing.
Get TicketsQueer Tales: Works in Progress
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Join us for a scratch night of brand new material and works-in-progress with two of Scotland’s standout spoken word poets! RJ Hunter’s and Gray Crosbie’s hilarious yet heartbreaking long-form shows in progress will be followed up by an electrifying performance by Harry Josephine Giles with the Edinburgh Trans Choir.
Get TicketsFinding Meaning, Seeking Consolation
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
This year’s festival theme, The Unseen World, explores how and where we find meaning and solace in an increasingly challenging world. Join Isabelle Baafi, Rosie Garland and Janette Ayachi, chaired by Alice Tarbuck, as they discuss how we might predict the future, make sense of the moment and understand the past – through poetry.
Get TicketsThe Ranting Poets
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
The ranting poets burst in the 1980s, with poets who were furious, funny, and frenetic – and while spoken word may have gone academic there are still some poets seething. In this event, we’re thrilled to bring together two poets whose work blends defiance with compassion and a cutting sense of humour to challenge gentrification, austerity and pretension. Tim Wells, who started as ranter in the 80s, will be joined on stage with poet and multi-slam champion, Jay Mitra – named as one of Apples & Snakes’ 40 Future Voices in Poetry.
Get TicketsPoetry Lab with Victoria Chang: Come Play!
5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Join Forward Prize winner Victoria Chang for an online generative writing lab, reading and writing poems which explore how we find meaning in an increasingly challenging world. Come to this online workshop with a big imagination, an open mind, a laptop and/or a notebook, and be prepared to have fun as we experiment in new ways.
Get TicketsIn Conversation with Len Pennie
5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Join Len Pennie, in conversation with Emma Collins, for a mixture of readings from and discussion about her incisive and fiercely honest new collection, poyums annaw. These poems are a call to arms, confronting ideas of patriarchy, gender-based violence and societal injustice with equal parts tenderness, quick-wit and righteous fury.
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BSL interpreted.The Scent of Weather… Poetry and Perfume, with JL Williams
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Join JL Williams in this workshop exploring memory, abstraction and the intersections between poetry and perfume, in partnership with Lush. Discover how the two can inspire each other, and create your own poetic work in response to the fascinating world of scent.
Get TicketsLoud Poets Slam Series: Edinburgh Heat
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
The prestigious Loud Poets Slam Series returns for its fourth year! Join us to cheer, clap and holler as Edinburgh’s top poets compete in the first of 10 heats for the biggest prize in UK slam poetry. Featuring current Edinburgh Champion Lucas Sheridan as sacrificial poet, this promises to be a thumping celebration of some of the best spoken word coming out of Scotland today.
Get TicketsPoetry Jam with RJ Hunter & the SpeakEasy House Band
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Expect the unexpected – as long as the unexpected includes poetry, music and plenty of improvisation. This year, our perennially popular poetry jam joins forces with RJ Hunter and the SpeakEasy House Band. Bring along a poem you’d like to perform, or come along to listen, and settle in for a night of musical fun.
Get TicketsThe Clearing
7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Join this year’s four Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Poets for a premiere of new collaborations co-conceived with musician, Kathryn Williams.
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These poems amplify whispered stories and recover myths from each corner of the British Isles. They tune into unheard frequencies of language as they find new ways to navigate elegy, absence and joy.Push the Boat Out Presents: Lord of the Isles and
7:30 pm - 10:15 pm
Push the Boat Out’s Saturday night gig is back! Be transported into a sublime soundscape as headliners Lord Of The Isles and Ellen Renton combine poetry, pedals and synths. They’ll be supported by Acolyte, an Edinburgh-based poetic and psychedelic ensemble. Expect storytelling and synths, hypnotic loops and harmonic depth.
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