A Break in the Waves

In this episode, recorded live at Push the Boat Out in November 2025, Len Pennie joins Festival Director Emma Collins to discuss her acclaimed collection poyums annaw, exploring themes of patriarchy, gender-based violence and social injustice through poetry and humour. Featuring readings from the collection and reflections on the power of Scots language, this episode offers a fierce, funny and dee...

In this special episode, recorded live at Push the Boat Out in November 2025, two of the most compelling voices in contemporary poetry come together for a haunting and illuminating conversation, chaired by Jenny Niven, Director of Edinburgh International Book Festival. Pascale Petit and Fiona Benson – shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize seven times between them – read from and discuss their darkl...

Becoming a father is not an easy process: the sleepless nights and burden of new responsibilities can weigh heavily. But amidst the challenges, there’s an untold joy that comes with meeting your child and discovering a new kind of love that can reshape your world. Raymond Antrobus and Niall Campbell have written extensively about fatherhood, love, and masculinity. Antrobus’s most recent collection...

Contemporary poetry can challenge, explore uncomfortable truths, and bear witness to unimaginable experiences. In Sasha Dugdale’s new collection, The Strongbox, recent history and Greek mythology meet. Her varied cast of characters are abducted to foreign lands, travel through war zones, and are haunted by conflicts. Oksana Maksymchuk’s Still City reflects life in the wake of extreme and unpredict...

In partnership with the Forward Prizes for Poetry, Push the Boat Out brought together two poets who released razor sharp collections in 2024 to discuss their work. Caroline Bird’s Ambush at Still Lake shows us the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness after the happy ending while Ella Frears’ Goodlord: An Email is a genre-defying book that takes the form of one long email, addressed to...

Disrupting the Narrative opened Push the Boat Out in 2024 with a theatrical performance exploring Edinburgh’s heritage from the perspective of its colonial past and uncovering stories of the city that haven’t always been acknowledged. Behind Disrupting the Narrative is a discussion based on the performance that further explores how art can contribute to the decolonisation of our heritage and the i...

Our latest podcast episode was recorded at our 2023 festival. Three hugely talented lyricists – rising indie star Hamish Hawk, Scottish folk legend Karine Polwart and celebrated cross-disciplinary artist Inua Ellams – come together to offer rare insights into the processes behind creating a song. What inspires the vivid imagery and metaphor in their work and how do they bring this into conversatio...

Listen to our new podcast episode recorded from our 2023 festival. This month, Jenny Niven talks with Jeremy Corbyn and Len McCluskey as they read some of their favourite poems from their co-published anthology Poetry for the Many. This beautiful new anthology features wide-ranging poems that have moved and enlightened them and, they hope, go some way to democratising poetry. William Blake, Bertol...

Hear work from two new stunning debut collections from Scotland-based poets K Patrick and Marjorie Lotfi recorded at our 2023 festival. K Patrick’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Review, Granta and Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize in 2021. Their debut novel, Mrs S was selected as an Observer Best Debut of the Year, and K was named a Granta Best of Young British Nove...

To tell your story is to create it. In this double bill, Kim Moore and Iona Lee both share poems and lyrical essays firmly written from the female gaze. In All The Men I Never Married, Kim Moore reckons with the harms and coercions of being female in a male-dominant world. Moore’s 2023 collection of lyric essays, Are You Judging Me Yet? Poetry and Everyday Sexism, turns the spotlight onto poetry a...

Eduardo C. Corral is a poet of many honours, awards, and residencies across America. A current teacher in the MFA programme at North Carolina State University, Corral is globally recognised for his harmonious blending of English and Spanish. Corral’s poetry is a tender exploration of history and sexuality, ensuring him a well-earned place on an international stage. Alycia Pirmohamed’s debut collec...

Push the Boat Out Festival 2022 commissioned seven innovative poets to reimagine some of Scotland’s most famous and infamous mythical beasts for this event, A Poetry Feast of Mythical Beasts. Continuing a rich, global tradition of new writing which retells traditional tales of old, these fresh and dynamic perspectives pull our selkies and fairies into the twenty-first century. With Hollie McNish,...

The amazing Zaffar Kunial and Andrés N. Ordorica perform live at Push the Boat Out 2022, in Summerhall's Anatomy Theatre. Produced in collaboration with EHFM. Zaffar Kunial has long been established as one of the UK’s most essential voices in contemporary poetry. A guide across countries and cultures, histories and memories, Kunial is a Faber poet who not only anchors his readers to the earth, but...

The amazing Leyla Josephine performs live at Push the Boat Out 2022, in Summerhall's Anatomy Theatre. Produced in collaboration with EHFM.

Poet, novelist, screenwriter, essayist and editor Kevin MacNeil reads 'On a Plane That Is Like a Finger Pointing at The Moon', in Gaelic and English. 'Fleeting, physical, boundless...' Kevin's poetry transports.

Welcome to A Break in the Waves, a moment of poetry brought to you by Push the Boat Out. Rachel McCrum is a poet, performer, and educator originally from Northern Ireland. During her 6 year stay in Edinburgh, before moving to her new home of Montreal, Rachel was BBC Scotland’s first Poet-in-Residence, a recipient of a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship, and one half of the much loved poetry duo, Ra...

Break In The Waves Solareye - Recycling by Push the Boat Out

Break In The Waves Nadine Aisha Jassat by Push the Boat Out

Esa Aldegheri's poem 'Tone', recorded and posted to celebrate and acknowledge International Women's Day.

Arresting visceral poem about sex and male desire from award winning poet Andrew MacMillan for Push the Boat Out, Edinburgh's International Poetry Festival

Roger is a writer who has performed worldwide. He is the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2019 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2020, shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry 2020 and shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize , The Oxford Brookes Poetry Prize, highly commended by the Forward Poetry Prize. His latest collection ‘A Portable Paradise’ was a Newstatesman book of the year. He was ch...

Janette Ayachi reads 'Adriatic Sea' for our series, Break in the Waves.

A new poem from award winning indigenous Australian poet Tony Birch's forthcoming collection (2021), Whisper Songs.

Harry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney, living in Leith. Their collection Tonguit (2015) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and The Games (2018) for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and Saltire Prize for Best Collection. They have a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling. Their theatre has toured globally, including to Forest Fringe...

Poetry and Me, a poem by Hannah Lavery for Push the Boat Out