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Festival Reading Group
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Can’t wait for Push the Boat Out? Get into the festival spirit by joining poet Marjorie Lotfi for an exploration of the poetry of some of the fantastic writers appearing at this year’s festival. Delve into a snapshot of the programme and go away with new poets you can’t wait to read more of or see live! No preparation is required.
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An Evening with Jackie Kay
6:45 pm - 8:30 pm
In partnership with the Fingal Hotel, don’t miss this lively and intimate event with the award-winning poet and writer Jackie Kay! Join us on board this luxury floating venue for an exclusive festival warm up celebrating the publication of Jackie Kay’s new Selected Poems. Enjoy readings, stories – and a glass of fizz on arrival!
Get TicketsJunior Creative Writing, with Joseph Coelho
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Calling all budding young writers! As part of PTBO 2026, Joseph Coelho will be joining Drumbrae Library’s regular junior creative writing group. The former children’s laureate will bring along a range of poetry prompts and writing exercises – all you need to bring is your enthusiasm!
For ages P5+Festival Reading Group (Thu 5th Nov)
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Can’t wait for Push the Boat Out? Get into the festival spirit by joining poet Marjorie Lotfi for an exploration of the poetry of some of the fantastic writers appearing at this year’s festival. Delve into a snapshot of the programme and go away with new poets you can’t wait to read more of or see live! No preparation is required.
Get TicketsOpening Night Cabaret, with Luke Wright
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Join us as we launch Push the Boat Out 2026 in style! Luke Wright will take the stage with an explosive set spanning more than two decades of poetry and performance: expect poems with sharp edges, strong rhythms and a big heart. Opening the night, we’ll enjoy poems from EmmaClaire Brightlyn and Nick Makoha and music from rapper RamZee.
Get TicketsTemporary Autonomous Poetry Zone – A Flotsam Flourish
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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?
Working With Marginalised Groups
10:15 am - 11:45 am
If you’re interested in using poetry to work with marginalised groups, don’t miss this workshop with social worker and researcher Dr Autumn Roesch-Marsh. Sharing her experience of working with care-experienced young people on a project about friendship, Autumn will support participants to think about how they themselves might develop sessions for working with marginalised groups.
Get TicketsBetween and Beyond Stage and Page: Documenting Spoken Word
10:30 am - 11:30 am
For many poets, spoken word is their way into writing and sharing poetry – but what if you want a spoken word piece to continue after you perform it? Join us to consider the possibilities of publishing, filmed poems and more with Mark Gallie of spoken word collective I Am Loud, Charlie Roy of Stewed Rhubarb Press, and writer and artist Julie Laing.
Get TicketsMentorship and Support: Programmes for Emerging Poets
11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Mentorship schemes for emerging writers can be invaluable – but what exactly are they, and what support do they provide? Join Caitrin Armstrong, Head of Writing Communities at the Scottish Book Trust, Jim Carruth from the Clydebuilt Verse Apprenticeship Scheme and Nick Makoha from the Obsidian Foundation to find out.
Chaired through the ConVERSE Emerging Chairs Programme with the University of Edinburgh
Get TicketsShared Reading with Open Book
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Fancy digging deeper into the amazing talent taking part in this year’s festival? Join Jess and Lizzie from Open Book for a gentle session of shared reading and discussion of poems by a selection of poets featured. Expect to go away with new favourites! No homework or experience is required.
Get TicketsEditing Your Own Work
1:45 pm - 3:30 pm
Good editing can make the difference between a good poem and a great one. Join Helena Nelson (HappenStance Press) and Eleanor Livingstone (poet and former festival director) for a hands-on editing workshop. Bring along a draft poem, ideally 8 – 16 lines long, and experiment with techniques to take your writing to the next level…
Get TicketsNew Writers Awards 2027: Spoken Word Shortlist
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Cheer on Scotland’s emerging spoken word talent and discover the scene’s future headliners! Our friends over at Scottish Book Trust are joining us for an evening of short performances. As part of this year’s New Writers Awards selection process, the shortlisted Spoken Word applicants will be sharing their skills in front of a live audience.
Get TicketsPoetical Pub Quiz
6:15 pm - 7:45 pm
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. But do you know who actually said that? If you do, you might just be in luck.
Join Ross McCleary and Beth Cochrane, aka Slamothy Jones, for a highly competitive and stylishly aggressive poetry pub quiz that will stretch the definitions of Poetic General Knowledge and Pub Quizzery alike.
Get TicketsMeet the Publishers
10:30 am - 11:30 am
Meet three fantastic publishers and learn more about how they work with poets and what they look for. John McAuliffe of Carcanet, Ghazal Mosadeq of Pamenar Press and Edward Crossan from Birlinn will be joining forces to demystify the work of publishers and answer your questions about pitching, editing and the poet-publisher relationship.
Chaired through the ConVERSE Emerging Chairs Programme with the University of Edinburgh
Get TicketsBookbug Pushes the Boat Out
10:30 am - 11:00 am
Join us for a special festival Bookbug with children’s poet Rachel Plummer! Bookbug sessions are a firm favourite with parents and wee ones for sharing stories and poems, songs: we’ll be enjoying all the songs and rhymes you’d usually expect, plus Rachel will read some of their favourite children’s poems.
Room to Play
Across the Festival, Fri 13th Nov
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Room to Play: DIVIDUAL returns! Originally created for Hidden Door 2026, this creative technology-infused artistic installation has been reimagined for Push the Boat Out festival. Conceived as a retro-futuristic tech conglomerate that produces lifestyle technology, the exhibit features collaborative, reactive, multi-artform work that plays on themes of privacy, observation and data capitalism.
Contracts and Copyright: What Do You Need to Know?
11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Navigating the world of contracts and copyright is daunting even at its best. Amanda Holiday, from the Society of Authors’ Poetry & Spoken Word Group, Duncan Lockerbie of publisher Tapsalteerie, and Anna Jaconelli, a senior solicitor in Intellectual Property will be discussing what you need you know when negotiating with publishers.
Get TicketsPublisher Surgeries
12:45 pm - 1:45 pm
Sign up for a ten-minute 1:1 with some of the fantastic publishers attending our symposium day, including publishers and editors from Carcanet, Birlinn, Pamenar Press, Art Riot Press, Tapsalteerie and Stewed Rhubarb. Don’t miss this chance to get some individualised advice and guidance on the submission and publication process.
Meet the Programmers
1:45 pm - 3:00 pm
The decisions that go into creating a festival programme are many and varied. Join Push the Boat Out director Emma Collins, freelance festival programmer Lee Randall, and Theresa Muñoz from Newcastle Poetry Festival to learn more about how they work, and what you might want to consider when approaching festivals. Chaired by Peggy Hughes.
Get TicketsTranslating into Different Places, with Lorna Goodison
2:00 pm - 3:50 pm
Lorna Goodison’s latest publication, an astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, situates Dante firmly in Jamaica and draws on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech. Join the former Poet Laureate of Jamaica for this online workshop on translating existing stories and texts into different places and Englishes, exploring the possibilities, challenges and solutions.
Get TicketsOur Voices Together
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Join acclaimed poet and children’s author Nadine Aisha Jassat for an engaging and accessible workshop for children of all ages and their families. Together we’ll have fun trying new poetry prompts to celebrate who we are, and making a collective poem from all of us to be displayed throughout the festival.
Get TicketsPurple Poetry
3:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Purple Poetry creates on-the-spot typewritten poems based on a brief conversation. This could be about absolutely anything: where is your heart right now, how has life been feeling lately? Award-winning poet Heather Rose combines counselling-informed listening with her lyrical poetry style to create a typewritten poem to treasure for only £10!
Sail the Storyteller Sea
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Join the former Children’s Laureate, Joseph Coelho, for a fun, energetic and inspiring event packed with poetry! Joseph will be sharing his most recent poetry book for kids, Rapunzel is a Lettuce. These are poems to fire the imagination and take you and your wee ones exploring.
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Perfect for children aged 7-11Beyond 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. With thanks to Typewronger Books
Get TicketsA Thousand Words: A Visual Poetry Workshop
4:15 pm - 5:45 pm
Join poet and artist Dan Power for a hands-on writing workshop, where we’ll be blurring the line between poem and picture. Drawing from concrete poetry and photography, this workshop will take your writing to unexpected places, revealing connections between imagery and the imaginary. Transform poems into pictures and pictures into poems as you create your own visual poetry.
Get TicketsYoung Verses with Score Scotland
5:00 pm - 5:45 pm
Join the young people from Tynecastle High School as they share poetry, spoken word music and stories created with Bee Asha and Kat Borrowdale (for Push the Boat Out) and Davie Luhanga (for SCOREScotland).
Get TicketsWords and Wine
5:45 pm - 6:55 pm
Celebrate the start of the weekend by raising a glass with us! Joe Trotter from Edinburgh’s independent wine merchants Great Grog will take you through a tempting array of wines, sharing each drink’s story and history. Drinks will be poetically paired with performances by acclaimed spoken word poet Kate Ireland.
Get TicketsLoud Poets Slam
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Make sure you cheer, clap and holler as Edinburgh’s top poets compete in the first of twelve heats for the biggest prize in UK slam poetry. Featuring Josh Cake as sacrificial poet, this will be a thumping celebration of some of the best spoken word coming out of Scotland today.
Get TicketsAn Evening with Henry Normal
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
To celebrate the publication of his fourth collected poems anthology, writer, poet and TV producer Henry Normal has concentrated his thousand or so poems into a one-hour show like a tin of Campbell’s soup in a black hole. Comedy, poetry, stories and songs – he’s managed to pack everything into the show and more.
Get TicketsHiphop night with Culture Clan
9:00 pm - 10:30 pm
A celebration of true Scottish rap music, bringing together artists from across the country. Featuring headline act Red King, alongside Kouk and A420, expect live performances, an open cypher and a night showcasing the diversity, character and creativity of Scottish rap.
Get TicketsMarjorie’s Table
8:30 am - 9:00 am
In this friendly morning meet-up led by Forward Prize-winning poet Marjorie Lotfi, you’ll look at a cluster of poems by one of the poets from the festival’s online programme, reflect briefly on craft, and then spend some time writing in response.
Get TicketsCombing the Shoreline
10:00 am - 11:15 am
Be inspired by our shorelines, as you join artist and beachcomber extraordinaire Emily Dubious on a Portobello beachcomb. You’ll then use your found treasures as prompts to create new work, in a half-hour writing workshop led by poet Lisa Fannen.
Get TicketsInherited Stories: A Masterclass with Sarah Howe
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
Join Sarah Howe for a workshop exploring the stories we inherit and the fertile space where generational memory and ancestral lore shade into myth and hearsay. We’ll look at the myths about ourselves that others impose on us, thinking about inherited and newly invented poetic forms, before generating new drafts.
Get TicketsTakeover: On the Shoreline of Infinity
10:45 am - 11:40 am
Shoreline of Infinity is Scotland’s brightest and best Science Fiction magazine, publishing stories, poetry and articles since 2015. Join us as we investigate the liminal, speculating about the future and considering the past from our vantage point of the ever-shifting sands of the present. Bram E Gieben, Medha Singh, Jeda Pearl, Lesa Ng and Rachel Plummer will be performing along with our MC Pippa Goldschmidt.
Get TicketsAn Open Book Tour of Scotland
11:45 am - 12:40 pm
Join Open Book writers from across the country for a session packed with humour, storytelling and words to make you think. You’ll hear a mixture of individual work and collaborative poems responding to themes such as Measuring, Comfort, Friendship, One Last Time, and many other things in between.
Get TicketsStates of Emergency: Writing the Plague
11:45 am - 12:40 pm
Join Polly Atkin and Niall O’Gallagher to discuss two collections which explore solitude and connection in a time of plague. Niall will be sharing translations from his upcoming Gaelic novella-in-verse Litreachan Plàighe (Plague Letters), while Polly will read from Emergency Dream, a collection which insistently centres disabled joy and disabled rage.
Get TicketsExperimenting with Words and Music
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
Want to collaborate with musicians, but not sure where to start? This workshop with Iona Lee, poet and frontwoman of poetry-led band Acolyte, and DJ Nikki Kent has you covered. We’ll play with rhythm and tone, listening and responding, reflect on performance, experimentation and the musicality of language, and have the chance to try it all out.
Get TicketsContested Bodies
12:45 pm - 1:40 pm
Known for compelling, innovative and original work, in recent collections Kim Moore and Charlotte Van den Broeck each explore the female body as contested landscape. Kim’s The House of Broken Things conjures an intimate atmosphere of haunted domesticity, while Charlotte’s The Inside of a Stone explores the emotional resonance between desert landscapes and womanhood.
Get TicketsWriting Between Languages
1:15 pm - 2:15 pm
Discover the creative potential which exists between and within languages, with performances from three incredible poets. Between them Ghazal Mosadeq, Asmaa Azaizeh and Robbie MacLeòid write across English and Persian, Arabic and Gaelic. Join them for a multilingual poetical adventure!
Get TicketsTakeover: Art Riot
1:45 pm - 2:45 pm
Join Art Riot Press, the small press with a big attitude, bringing you the very best new voices from Scotland and beyond! Enjoy performances by Julie Laing, Aditya Narayan, and EmmaClaire Brightlyn alongside some cheeky poetic audience participation shenanigans, hosted by Versaye duo, Lorna Callery-Sithole and Wendy Miller.
Get TicketsEkphrasis: The Secret Rewards of Larceny
2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Join legendary poet Kwame Dawes for this online workshop on ekphrasis! After a discussion about the ways in which ekphrasis (the description of a work of visual art) has worked in some meaningful poetry, you’ll attempt your own ekphrasis poems making use of artbooks available online as we enjoy and steal from great art.
Get TicketsMake A Tiny Poetry Game with Tinderbox
Across the Festival, Sat 14th Nov
2:45 pm - 4:15 pm
Make your poetry interactive, learn about game design, and make your own tiny pixel-art game using Bitsy, a little engine for little games, worlds, and stories! Led by Tinderbox Collective, this workshop is open to any level of experience with games, including complete beginners.
Get Ticketspool burn lock and sluice
3:00 pm - 3:55 pm
During our new residency programme, poet Iain Morrison and visual artist Corin Sworn explored Little Sparta Ian Hamilton Finlay’s art garden, becoming fascinated by the challenges of keeping this living artwork in good health during ongoing climate catastrophe. Join us for an artist’s talk about the garden and a performance of Iain and Corin’s new work.
Supported by the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay
Get TicketsIn Conversation: Karen Solie and Sarah Howe
3:00 pm - 3:55 pm
Karen Solie’s 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize winning collection, Wellwater, is described as holding “two sentiments, The world is a beautiful place / The world is a terrible place, in perfect equipoise”. Also shortlisted, Sarah Howe’s Foretokens navigates the complex inheritance of family, language and colonialism. Join them to discuss these luminous collections.
Get TicketsTracing the Shoreline
4:00 pm - 4:55 pm
Within this year’s festival theme, The Space Between, we’re exploring shorelines, their significance, power and the threat posed by climate crisis to our coastlines. Garry Mackenzie will join us with Firth, a poetic portrait of the Firth of Forth. Alycia Pirmohamed will read from her upcoming collection, as well as her memoir, Shorelines.
Get TicketsPoetry as Witness, Poetry as Protest
4:15 pm - 5:10 pm
Hannah Lavery and Don Mee Choi are united by their embrace of work both playful and political. Don Mee Choi’s Freely Frayed grapples with the politics of distance and language in its exploration of anti-colonial logic and identity. Hannah Lavery’s Everything Everyday is a formally innovative poetic journal, where personal confession and public ritual converge.
Get TicketsPurple Poetry (Sat 14th)
4:15 am - 5:10 pm
Purple Poetry creates on-the-spot typewritten poems based on a brief conversation. This could be about absolutely anything: where is your heart right now, how has life been feeling lately? Award-winning poet Heather Rose combines counselling-informed listening with her lyrical poetry style to create a typewritten poem to treasure for only £10!
Roundtable With Fady Joudah
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm
CANCELLED: Due to other commitments, Fady Joudah is no longer able to take part in this event.
Take part in this intimate online round table reading and discussion with Palestinian poet Fady Joudah, in conversation with poet and publisher Anthony Anaxagorou. Fady will be reading from his most recent collection […], a prize-winning collection which urgently speaks to Palestine’s daily and historic erasure.
Get TicketsFetches and Folklore
5:15 pm - 6:10 pm
Join us for a double bill showcasing two of the most exciting debuts from the past year. Playful and spirited, Kym Deyn and Colin Bramwell explore and undo binaries, drawing on the doppelgangers and trickster figures of folklore to do so.
Get TicketsPoetry Jam with Anoraq
6:15 pm - 7:15 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 spoken word band Anoraq. Come along with a poem you’ve always wanted to read with a backing band, or simply to listen and settle in for a night of musical fun.
Get TicketsPoetry Tasting Menu with Ella Risbridger
6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Treat yourself with food writer and poet Ella Risbridger. With Ella’s best-selling debut cookbook described as “a manual for living and a declaration of hope”, there’s no better host for our inaugural full poetry tasting menu, where selected poems match your meal.
Includes a glass of fizz and speciality focaccia, followed by a two-course meal.
Get TicketsMaryville by Joelle Taylor
7:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Join Joelle Taylor for the Scottish Premiere of the staged reading of Maryville: a searing, poetic excavation of fifty years of lesbian counterculture that charts the lives of four butch lesbians through five decades of underground queer history. Directed by Neil Bartlett, with visuals from Sweatmother, Maryville explores the scars, hopes and potentialities of dyke identity and the queer underground.
Get TicketsPush the Boat Out’s Saturday night gig with Anthony Joseph and band
7:30 pm - 10:30 pm
Push the Boat Out’s annual Saturday Night gig presents award-winning writer and musician Anthony Joseph and his band. At their only Scottish gig this year, enjoy a hypnotic fusion of spoken word, jazz, Afrobeat, funk and the rhythms of the Caribbean. With support from rapper, poet and musician, Bee Asha.
Get TicketsMarjorie’s Table (Sun 15th)
8:30 am - 9:00 am
In this friendly morning meet-up led by Forward Prize-winning poet Marjorie Lotfi, you’ll look at a cluster of poems by one of the poets from the festival’s online programme, reflect briefly on craft, and then spend some time writing in response.
Get TicketsTo the Point: A Workshop with Pens and Swords
10:30 am - 11:55 am
Led by spoken word artist and fight director EmmaClaire Brightlyn, this is a chance to be bold in your writing. Alternating bursts of writing prompts with basic sword work involving gentle and dynamic movement, this workshop will see writers parry words, cut lines and clash ideas. Bring your own notebook and pen. Swords provided!
Get TicketsCreating Queer and Othered Worlds
10:30 am - 11:55 am
Join acclaimed poet Joelle Taylor for an intimate writing workshop exploring critical fabulation through a queer lens. Experimenting with approaches Joelle used in the collections Maryville and C+nto & Othered Poems, this workshop will look at how to create fictional universes in poetry, and how to explore queer identity as we build worlds.
Get TicketsOur Many-Voiced Country
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
As Scots Makar, Peter Mackay has embraced a mission to celebrate the many languages written in Scotland today. In this event, he brings together Deborah Moffatt, Tim Tim Cheng, Vahid Davar, Mae Diansangu, Paul Malgrati and Jordí Larios to present new writing interweaving Gaelic and Chinese, Spanish and Persian, French and Doric.
Get TicketsA Portobello Poetry Walk
11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Eleanor Rees’ writing draws on liminal places and edgelands – so who better to take us on a poetry walk along the shoreline at Portobello. Join us for a short reading from Portents and Portals in Portobello Bookshop before a gentle walk along Portobello’s promenade, interspersed with readings and discussion.
Get TicketsMigration and Memory
12:00 pm - 12:55 pm
Learn what the future of Scottish poetry looks like in this double bill with Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley: two joint winners of the 2024 James Berry Poetry Prize, whose newly released debut collections each explore the porous boundary between past and present, asking what remains after once-familiar places and people have gone.
Get TicketsNovels in Verse
12:00 pm - 12:55 pm
Knockan, the new novel-in-verse by Glasgow Makar Jim Carruth, follows an estranged mother and daughter over a single week, while Grace Yee’s award-winning debut Chinese Fish is a decades-long multigenerational saga. In this double bill, Jim and Grace will read from their novels-in-verse and discuss the challenges and joys of this versatile form.
Chaired through the ConVERSE Emerging Chairs Programme with the University of Edinburgh
Get TicketsIn Conversation: Anthony Joseph
1:00 pm - 1:55 pm
Anthony Joseph has been celebrated as ‘the leader of the black avant-garde in Britain.’ His new collection, Haunting the Black Air, journeys between London, New York, Trinidad and beyond, moving from unabashed joy to crippling grief. Join the award-winning author for readings from and discussions about this formally daring and emotionally incisive collection.
Get TicketsTakeover: We Are Here Scotland
2:00 pm - 2:55 pm
We Are Here Scotland works in solidarity with Black and Global Majority communities to help create spaces and opportunities across Scotland’s creative industries. In this takeover, hosted by Arusa Qureshi, emerging poets Pepita Mwanga, Chisom Okoronkwo, and ACE V!S!ON take to the stage for a showcase of soul-stirring poetry and music.
Get TicketsPenelope’s Craft: an Online Reading
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
In penelope’s cra()ft: a post-epic, acclaimed German poet Ulrike Draesner sees Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, take to the sea alongside 100 other women from Ithaca. Join Ulrike and prize-winning translator Karen Leeder for a sneak peek into this energetic, tender and inventive book in translation, and to discuss re-writing and subverting myths.
Get TicketsRevisiting the Epic
2:00 pm - 2:55 pm
Christopher Nolan’s film of The Odyssey ignited a surprisingly hot debate around the interpretation of classical epics. Join researcher James Oakley and poets Cai Tianxin and Spencer Mason to discuss the epic form: its orality, tropes and enduring popularity.
Chaired through the ConVERSE Emerging Chairs Programme with the University of Edinburgh
Get TicketsIn Conversation: Naomi Shihab Nye
3:00 pm - 3:55 pm
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye read live! Join the former Young People’s Poet Laureate for the USA, in conversation with Alycia Pirmohamed, for a mixture of readings and discussion of her work, which is by turns humorous, immediate and urgently political.
Get TicketsPoetry Masterclass with Anthony Joseph
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
Join award-winning poet, novelist and musician Anthony Joseph for an ‘ear-training’ workshop for poets, exploring how sound and layers of meaning work together to create depth and mystery in poetry.
Get TicketsSea Shanties for Sirens and Landlubbers
4:00 pm - 4:55 pm
Whether you’re an experienced siren or you swear up and down you can’t carry a tune, don’t miss this lively session run by Edinburgh Shanty Co! No experience is necessary – come along to learn and sing some sea shanties, both traditional and original.
Get TicketsStrange Architecture
4:00 pm - 4:55 pm
In 2025, Kevin P. Gilday spent two months in Prague, writing a poetry cycle inspired by the city’s brutalist buildings. Kevin will read from these alongside JL Williams, whose new collection, Strange Architectures, details her nightly dreams of buildings during lockdown. Both poets reflect on how the spaces we inhabit inform our lives.
Get TicketsObsidian Foundation Online Showcase
4:15 pm - 5:15 pm
This online showcase brings together four brilliant poets from the Obsidian Foundation community. Hosted by Nick Makoha, we’ll hear from Gemma Bedeau, Aphra Le Levier-Bennett, Ed Mabrey and Maureen Onwunali. We’ll discuss the poets’ journeys, their work and the role of community, mentorship and development in their creative practice.
Get TicketsThe Space Between – New Poetic Performances
5:00 pm - 6:15 pm
We’re thrilled to premiere three new commissions in association with the National Theatre of Scotland. Investigating the theme of ‘The Space Between’, these inventive performances by Gray Crosbie and Guy Woods, Catherine Street and Nancy Burns, and Sunnah Khan explore poetry in conversation with sound design, archives and film.
Get TicketsCelebrating the Troublemaker: A Workshop
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
In this online workshop, aimed at anyone interested in writing family stories or social histories, Annemarie Ní Churreáin will help us to explore the challenges and responsibilities of writing hidden and obscured histories, alongside the role that folklore, magic and the Otherworld can play in our work.
Get TicketsBàird Bhaile: Gaelic Poetry and Song Night
6:00 pm - 7:50 pm
Join us for an evening of Gaelic poetry, music and song, brought together by Jeni Flannigan (Bothan Dhùn Èideann/Lusan Buì) and hosted by Màiri Britton. Immerse yourself in Gaelic’s living traditions, with performances from Ceitidh Chaimbeul, babs nicgriogair and Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir, alongside fiddle player Rona Wilkie and other voices from the wider Gaelic-speaking community.
Get TicketsRock the Boat
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Join hosts Catherine Wilson Garry and Julia Sorensen for the festival edition of Rock the Boat, PTBO’s longstanding monthly poetry open mic. Sign up in advance to perform your poetry alongside a score of other open mic-ers or kick back and enjoy the vibes. With feature poets Amy B. Moreno and Sol Vardi.
Get TicketsOn Slack Tide, with Aurora Engine, JL Williams, Dean Atta and Kirsty Logan
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Definition: the brief period at the turn of the tide when the water is still. This specially commissioned collaboration from musician Aurora Engine and poets JL Williams, Dean Atta and Kirsty Logan fuses music, voice, electronica, poetry and performance in a singular, striking soundscape. It explores life transitions of birth, coming of age and death; and the waiting, stasis and flurries of emotion that accompany them.
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