Festival Reading Group with Open Book – 4 Nov
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Can’t wait for Push the Boat Out? Get into the festival spirit by joining Marjorie Lotfi, poet and co-founder of Open Book, for an exploration of poetry from a handful of poets appearing at the festival. Expect to go away with new favourites! No homework or experience is required.
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Push the Boat Out and the Fingal Present: Hollie McNish and Michael Pedersen – Sat 8 Nov
6:45 pm - 7:45 pm
In partnership with the Fingal Hotel, we are delighted to welcome you to a very special nautical experience. Join us on board this luxury floating venue for an exclusive festival warm up with Sunday Times bestseller, Hollie McNish, and prize-winning author and Edinburgh Makar, Michael Pedersen. Alongside lively discussion, Hollie and Michael will read from their new work: Hollie’s much anticipated new collection Virgin and Michael’s magical novel, Muckle Flugga.
Get TicketsFestival Reading Group with Open Book – 18 Nov
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Can’t wait for Push the Boat Out? Get into the festival spirit by joining Marjorie Lotfi, poet and co-founder of Open Book, for an exploration of poetry from a handful of poets appearing at the festival. Expect to go away with new favourites! No homework or experience is required.
Get TicketsWords that Burn: Schools Showcase – Thu 20 Nov
5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Words that Burn is Amnesty International UK’s flagship creative education programme, it aims to empower young people to explore and take action for human rights through poetry.
Hosted by Imogen Stirling, pupils from Leith Academy, Portobello High School and Boroughmuir High School will be sharing their poetry inspired by the project as they stand up for human rights.
Get TicketsWords that Burn: Human Rights and Poetry Workshop – Morning
10:30 am - 11:45 am
Join Push the Boat Out and Amnesty International UK for a special two-hour workshop aimed at poet educators. You’ll learn about Human Rights Education and how you can embed it into your facilitation practice. Together we’ll explore how creativity can be a tool for activism and a powerful form of protest.
Get TicketsStart It Yourself
10:30 am - 11:30 am
As an emerging writer, starting your own project – whether it’s an open mic night or magazine or something else altogether – is a great way to grow your skills and your network. Join our panel to hear how they built their own projects from the ground up, and the skills they learned along the way.
Get TicketsHow to Succeed as a Creative Freelancer
11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Making it as a writer involves a whole host of skills: promoting your own work, juggling different jobs or chasing up invoices. Writers are rarely just writers – they’re creative freelancers wearing multiple hats. Our panel will be discussing how you can navigate the gig economy, while still making time for the important thing: writing.
Get TicketsWords that Burn: Human Rights and Poetry Workshop – Afternoon
1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
Join Push the Boat Out and Amnesty International UK for a special two-hour workshop aimed at poet educators. You’ll learn about Human Rights Education and how you can embed it into your facilitation practice. Together we’ll explore how creativity can be a tool for activism and a powerful form of protest.
Get TicketsHosting Like a Pro
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
A good compere can make or break an event. How do you get an audience energised without stealing the limelight? Join Loud Poets Katie Ailes and Kevin Mclean for a workshop on the tricks of the trade when it comes to hosting a successful event.
Get TicketsTranslating into Different Places, with Lorna Goodison
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Lorna Goodison’s latest publication is an astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, drawing on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech. Join the former Poet Laureate of Jamaica for this online workshop on translating existing stories into different places and Englishes. We’ll explore the possibilities this opens up and find innovative solutions to the challenges posed.
Get TicketsBeyond the Margins
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Join us to celebrate the launch of this brand-new poetry zine, and take home your own copy. Created by the people supported by the Simon Community Scotland through Streetreads, a library and community for people experiencing homelessness in Edinburgh, the zine explores their hopes and stories. With performances from group members, alongside facilitators Julie McNeill and Kevin Gilday. Refreshments provided.
In partnership with the Simon Community Scotland and supported by One City Trust. With thanks to Typewronger Books.
Get TicketsYoung Verses with SCOREScotland
5:00 pm - 5:45 pm
Join the young people from Wester Hailes High School as they share poetry, spoken word, music and stories created with Bee Asha and Lauren Bianchi (PTBO) and Davie Luhanga (SCOREScotland). Expect flights of fantasy and tales of belonging, connection and identity.
In partnership with SCOREScotland and supported by the Ponton Trust and the Nancie Massey Charitable Trust.
Get TicketsWrestling with Life: Nina Mingya Powles and Anthony V. Capildeo
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
In their recent collections, Nina Mingya Powles and Anthony V. Capildeo wrestle with life in our restless times. In the Hollow of the Wave by Nina examines orientalism, art and artmaking in a time of ecological crisis. In Polkadot Wounds, Anthony counterpoints untimely deaths with breakthroughs of joy, in queer and far-flung communities.
Get TicketsWords and Wine with Leena Norms
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Get into the festival mood with a tasting menu of poetry and wine! Joe Trotter from wine merchants Great Grog will take you through a tempting array of delectable wines, sharing each drink’s story and history while you sip. A poetic pairing will be provided by poet, vlogger and presenter Leena Norms. BSL interpreted.
Get TicketsWhat Now?
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
A vibrant Friday night of theatre, spoken word and music brought to you by What Now? and Push the Boat Out.
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Join playwrights Hannah Lavery, Zinnie Harris and William Letford for a series of newly commissioned theatre shorts offering an urgent response to the geopolitical cultural moment we’re living through. With spoken word from Anthony Anaxagorou and music by Carla J. Easton.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.
Get TicketsTakeover: 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
All Weekend, 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
All Weekend, 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
All Weekend, 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
All Weekend, 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.
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.
Get TicketsOnline 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 & Lush
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 Ellen Renton, Supported by Acolyte
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.
Get TicketsEmbodied Poetry: A Yoga and Writing Workshop
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Join award-winning poet and storyteller Spencer Mason for a poetry and yoga workshop, with 45 minutes of yoga leading into 45 minutes of embodied responses to writing prompts. Participants will be invited to explore writing in any medium they choose. Please bring a notebook and pen with you. Yoga mats will be provided.
Get TicketsThe Mythic and the Familiar: Fiona Benson and Pascale Petit
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Start your Sunday right with what promises to be a haunting double bill, as two poets at the top of their game read from and discuss their unsettling and intriguing latest collections. In Midden Witch, Fiona Benson lets the women accused of witchcraft speak back to us. Pascale Petit’s Beast, meanwhile, is populated by mythic and familial beasts, roaming wildernesses near and far.
Get TicketsA Portobello Poetry Walk: Being Guided By Nature
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Join clare e. potter for a poetry walk around Portobello Beach where we will pay deep attention, taking nature as our guide for our writing. We will practise listening and noticing, and think about how the environment we are in can be a collaborator in our writing. Please meet for this walk at The Portobello Bookshop on Portobello High Street.
Get TicketsPoetry as Exile: Marjorie Lotfi and Najwan Darwish
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
The experience of creating art from afar when your homeland is in conflict is uniquely challenging. Najwan Darwish and Marjorie Lotfi will each present new work considering this theme, especially commissioned for the festival, alongside readings from their powerful repertoires. This will be followed by a discussion chaired by Esa Aldegheri.
Get TicketsMagma: The Liberation Issue
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Join us for the launch of Magma’s Liberation issue, full of rousing poetry and defiant prose. Hosted by Isabelle Baafi, the event will feature readings from Alycia Pirmohamed, Nat Raha, Zain Rishi and Amy L. King, as well as a video presentation and discussion, inviting us to consider what liberation truly means and how we can enact it.
Get TicketsThe Alchemy of Metaphor: a Workshop with Pascale Petit
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
Join award-winning poet Pascale Petit to write poems full of metamorphosis and creative alchemy as she encourages you to explore the power of metaphor, and its ability to translate the personal into vivid new realms. Discover how to transform your experiences, and how the more-than-human worlds can help us turn experience into beauty.
Get TicketsRe-imagining the Hero’s Journey: Luke Kennard and Nick Makoha
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Come and listen as Luke Kennard and Nick Makoha read from and discuss their latest collections, The Book of Jonah and The New Carthaginians, discussing the stories we think we already know, and the unexpected places they might lead us.
Get TicketsPunk, Poetry and Politics
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
In our festival theme Poetry Is Punk, we explore poetry as a DIY art form: political, exciting and subversive. Join punk poets Paul Case, Mátyás Dunajcsik and slam champion Kemi George Simpson, in conversation with Jay Mitra, as they dig into the intersections between poetry, politics and punk.
Get TicketsPink Witch, with the 12
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Join the 12 collective for a showcase of Pink Witch, a visceral, wry and ever surprising anthology responding to the 2023 Barbie movie and the Witches of Scotland campaign – which seeks historic justice for the people executed for witchcraft in Scotland. Intimate and eclectic, these are poems which question identity, vilification and the names historically used to constrain women.
Get TicketsCollective Memory, Documentation, and Resistance with Noor Hindi
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
In this workshop, we’ll be exploring poems from the Palestinian poetry anthology Heaven Looks Like Us, reading poems that explore themes of homeland, grief and joy, and silence and testimony. We’ll discuss how poets transform lived experiences through art that challenges erasure, opening space to imagine new futures. Noor Hindi will guide participants through generative writing prompts to create new work.
Get TicketsThe Pleasures and Power of Reading, with Peter Mackay
2:30 pm - 3:30 pm
What happens when we read? What is it that we get from losing ourselves in a book? Does reading actually improve our wellbeing?
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Join Makar Peter Mackay in conversation with Philippa Cochrane and Dr Sarah McGeown for this special Book Week Scotland event, as he explores the impact that being a reader has had on his life.
BSL interpreted.Out of the Archive
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Today’s panel brings together three poets who’ve drawn on a range of archives for their work – from the accounts of witch trials to the archive of Muriel Spark. Join Theresa Muñoz, Fiona Benson and Rommi Smith as they discuss the challenges and joys of archival research, and how it can feed into and transform a poetic practice.
Get TicketsPoetry is Punk
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Don’t miss what promises to be an electrifying performance with two experimental poets and performers! Between them, German-Hungarian polyglot punk poet Mátyás Dunajcsik and Edinburgh-based poet and activist Nat Raha combine spoken word, bass, loop pedals and a whole lot of energy.
Get TicketsGaelic, Scots, Mè’phàà: Translation Beyond Dominant Languages
4:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Colin Bramwell’s Fower Pessoas has recently been making waves for its bold translation of Fernando Pessoa into vernacular Scots. What possibilities emerge when we remember that living literary languages aren’t just written in, but necessarily translated between? Join us for a discussion between Colin, Robbie MacLeòid and Juana Adcock, chaired by Harry Josephine Giles, to explore those possibilities.
Get TicketsGaming the System
5:00 pm - 6:15 pm
Play has always been central to how Push the Boat Out explores and platforms poetry – and from playful poetry it’s just a hop, skip and jump to poetic games… Join Calum Rodger, Krishan Coupland, Luci Holland and the young people from the Tinderbox Games Club as they discuss the parallels between poetry and games, and the possibilities that emerge in combining the two.
Get TicketsAnthropocene – New Poetic Performances
5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
We’re delighted to premiere three new poetry-led performance commissions in association with the National Theatre of Scotland! Investigating the theme of ‘Anthropocene: the Human-Altered World’, Iona Lee and Nikki Kent, Garry Mackenzie and Sam Firth, and Taylor Dyson and Craig Aitchison explore poetry in conversation with different artistic disciplines.
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BSL interpreted.Rock the Boat
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Feeling inspired to share your own poems? Join us for the festival iteration of Rock the Boat, Push the Boat Out’s longstanding monthly poetry open mic. Register via our website to perform your poetry alongside a score of other open mic-ers or kick back, relax and enjoy the vibes. With featured poets Sam Phipps, Dean Tsang and Alice Keeling.
Get TicketsBàird Bhaile: Gaelic Poetry and Song Night
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Round out the festival with an evening of Gaelic poetry and songs, brought together by Jeni Flannigan (of Bothan Dhùn Èideann and Lusan Buì) and hosted by Niall O’ Gallagher. Come with us and immerse yourself in the witty, soulful world of the ‘local bards’, past and present. You’ll be in good company: Josie Duncan, Iona Mairead Davidson & Calum ‘singing weatherman’ MacColla, alongside other established and emerging voices from the wider Bothan Dhùn Èideann community.
Get TicketsLight it Up: Tinderbox Orchestra
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Join us for a glorious festival finale! Bringing together rappers, poets and singers with soaring strings, heavy brass, woodwind, and thundering bass and drums, Tinderbox Orchestra are teaming up with some of Scotland’s most exciting spoken word artists to combine original music and spoken word performances transforming preconceptions of what an orchestra can be.
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