August may dominate the international headlines, but Edinburgh’s cultural identity was never meant to be packed away with the Fringe pop-up bars. That performing arts circus has held court every August since 1947, but the capital’s literary bones run deeper still. Long before UNESCO designated Edinburgh the world’s first City of Literature in 2004, this was the home ground of Robert Fergusson, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Muriel Spark—a town that drew Robert Burns into its smoky Old Town taverns, gave Norman MacCaig his dry, quizzical voice, and sheltered incoming writers seeking space to think. When the autumn chill arrives and the Royal Mile empties of flyering drama students, that long-standing appetite for text, rhythm, and debate moves indoors.
Push the Boat Out (PTBO) understands this territory. Launched in 2021 to mark the centenary of late Scottish Makar Edwin Morgan, the festival borrowed its name and attitude from Morgan’s poem ‘At Eighty’—a call to “push the boat out, compañeros” that rejected retirement in favour of creative risk. Originally founded by arts producer Jenny Niven (now Director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival) and incubated inside the cavernous halls of Summerhall, the festival has steadily expanded under director Emma Collins.
It has traded a single-venue footprint for a citywide network, setting down anchors at The Pleasance while insisting that poetry should be treated as a live contact sport rather than a polite library recital.
Now heading into its 2026 edition, PTBO has released the first details of its programme, running 12–15 November at The Pleasance, preceded by a curtain-raiser on 31 October. That preview places former Scots Makar Jackie Kay aboard The Fingal, the former Northern Lighthouse Board tender converted into a floating hotel in Leith. Kay will read from her newly published Selected Poems, a collection charting three decades of work. It is an atmospheric setting for verse rooted in Scottish coastlines and personal history.
The Festival Nights Line-up
The main evening bills at The Pleasance lean into the cross-genre collisions that have become the event’s signature. The Festival Nights strand opens with a cabaret featuring poets EmmaClaire Brightlynn and Nick Makoha alongside guest acts, followed by performance poet Luke Wright. Wright marks two decades on stage with material from Later Life Letter—his show examining adoption and identity—paired with new work written for an upcoming 2027 live tour. Wright remains one of the sharpest technicians on the UK spoken-word circuit, a writer who knows how to wring rhythmic force out of formal verse without slowing the tempo.
Then comes Henry Normal. Best known to television audiences as the co-writer behind The Royle Family and The Mrs Merton Show, Normal has spent the past decade refocusing on poetry and live storytelling. Touring his fourth collected anthology, he aims to condense a thousand poems into an hour of verse, anecdote, and music. Whether a thousand poems can breathe comfortably inside sixty minutes remains to be seen, but Normal’s deadpan delivery and easy stage presence should ensure an engaging hour.
Underground History and Saturday Grooves
The Scottish premiere of Joelle Taylor’s Maryville will provide one of the weekend’s most ambitious theatrical stagings. Following her T.S. Eliot Prize-winning collection C+nto & Othered Poems, Taylor’s new performance work follows four butch lesbians across five decades of underground queer history in London. Directed by veteran theatre-maker Neil Bartlett with visuals from artist Sweatmother, Maryville attempts an archaeological excavation of counterculture, club spaces, and community survival.
Saturday night switches focus to music. Musician and poet Anthony Joseph arrives with his full band to blend Caribbean rhythms, jazz, and Afrobeat with spoken-word delivery. Support comes from Scottish artist Bee Asha, who pairs verse with rap and soul. It is the type of billing that demonstrates why PTBO resists traditional literary festival conventions: verse written to carry over a rhythm section rather than echo off a lecture hall ceiling.
The festival draws to a close on Sunday 15 November with a collaborative commission led by musician Aurora Engine, who joins forces with poets JL Williams, Dean Atta, and guest performers. Combining electronica, instrumentation, and live reading, the performance replaces earlier planned lineups to deliver a new final staging for 2026.
“We’re delighted to share this first glimpse of what’s to come for Push the Boat Out 2026,” said Emma Collins, Festival Director. “The preview event and the Festival Night performances give an early taste of the extraordinary range of voices, ideas and live experiences that shape this year’s festival.”
Beyond the Pleasance
PTBO’s work also extends outside the four-day November hub. Earlier this year, the organisation partnered with the estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay (my favourite, if extinct, local artist) and Little Sparta, funding a collaborative residency for poet Iain Morrison and visual artist Corin Sworn. Their project, pool burn lock and sluice, draws directly from Finlay’s celebrated concrete poetry garden in the Pentland Hills. The resulting work receives an initial showing at Little Sparta on 27 September, ahead of a second staging during the main festival in Edinburgh.
“We’re delighted to share this first glimpse of what’s to come for Push the Boat Out 2026,” said Emma Collins, Festival Director.
Backing from public funders remains central to keeping these cross-disciplinary commissions afloat. “Push the Boat Out shows us everything that poetry can be, and how it interacts with language and identity while merging with other artforms,” said Alan Bett, Head of Literature and Publishing at Creative Scotland. “Initial programme details promise vibrant and varied entertainment to delight audiences, whilst providing a vital platform for artists and ideas. We encourage any lover of words to come experience Edinburgh in winter, lit up by some of the best poetry from Scotland and beyond.”
Tickets for the announced preview and evening bills go on sale on Thursday 3 September at 10am, with single tickets ranging from £5 alongside pay-what-you-can options, and a full festival pass priced at £55. The complete 2026 programme will be revealed on 1 October.
“Push the Boat Out shows us everything that poetry can be, and how it interacts with language and identity while merging with other artforms,” said Alan Bett, Head of Literature and Publishing at Creative Scotland.
For the world’s inaugural City of Literature, maintaining a dedicated platform for poetry after the August crowds have dispersed is more than a nice-to-have. PTBO offers contemporary writers room to experiment without having to compete with the commercial bedlam of the summer festival circuit. It’s made all the more valuable in light of the Book Festival’s retreat to the polite halls of The Edinburgh Futures Institute, and the loss of Roland Gulliver’s — now Director of the Toronto Festival of Authors — literary cabaret, Unbound.
With tickets starting at a fiver, pay-what-you-can options, and a bill that ranges from floating recitals in Leith to late-night Afrobeat grooves, PTBO makes taking a punt on something new remarkably painless. It treats poetry not as an elite exercise, but as a proper night out with grit, music, and surprising bite. As the dark November chill settles over the capital, that refusal to play it safe makes this festival an ideal excuse to pull on a coat, head down to The Pleasance, and hear what contemporary writers are making of the world right now.
Featured Image: PTBO26 – JackieKay and the Fingal – Neil Hanna
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