Push the Boat Out 2024: Our programme picks

The typical poet archetype is one of a semi-nomadic figure, untethered to any one place other than by its Bardic traditions. Ready to improvise a stage at will for any spontaneous audience that demands it. The image fits this year’s edition of Push the Boat Out rather well, given its necessary last-minute scramble for new venues for its 54 events.

The change follows Summerhall’s announcement that legal woes threaten the multi-arts space’s future; instead, the 130 artists that were due to inhabit it from 22-24 November will disperse across The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Pleasance, Dovecot Studios and Dance Base. Here, we give you a taste of its varied programme that asks where we came from, how it shapes our modern world, and where the hell it’s all going. Featured are a piece of theatre; a night out; a retrospective; and an exhibition with an adjoining discussion.

Disrupting the Narrative

Scottish Storytelling Centre, 22 Nov, 8.30pm

This theatrical performance by Hannah Lavery, Jeda Pearl, Shasta Ali, Niall Moorjani and Alycia Pirmohamed casts a questioning eye on Edinburgh’s heritage sites and historic collections, spotlighting how the city’s colonial roots have resulted in the city that stems from them. What can we learn of its inhabitants and institutions through a decolonialist lens, and how can it lead us to rebuild and re-imagine? The storytellers involved are stalwarts of the Scottish poetry and oral storytelling scene, most recently featuring at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (Lavery) and in last month’s Scottish Storytelling Festival (Moorjani). They will be joined by composer, sound designer and musician Niroshini Thambar for a performance that will also be livestreamed from the festival’s website.

Push the Boat Out Presents: Iona Fyfe & Friends

Dovecot Studios, 23 Nov, 8pm

It wouldn’t be Saturday night at Push The Boat Out without a signature evening gig running past 10pm. This time: DJ Nikki Kent and Iona Lee overlay poetic vocals and electrifying beats; Emma Capponi and Fionnbarr Byrne blend ethereal and folk sounds; and closing the evening is the award-winning folk singer and Scots language activist Iona Fyfe, hot on the heels of a North American tour. With folk unifying and expressing the voices of a culture’s regular people, the antidote to the establishment sound, is the genre not the spiritual predecessor to the sound system that is the pulsing heart to your favourite club? Come and be reminded that poetry runs through the veins of even the most ecstatic, heady night out.

And All Great Art Is True: A Celebration of Benjamin Zephaniah

Dance Base, 24 Nov, 6pm

The festival’s collaboration with Qian Zephaniah celebrates the life and work of her late husband, the great Benjamin Zephaniah, whose work as an artist and activist shone a much needed light on issues of incarceration and racism the world over. His poetry dates back to the 1980s and, in the near 40 years until his death in 2023, spanned genres and continents.

For example, his 1990 work Rasta Time in Palestine blended in elements of travelogue from his time in Gaza and the West Bank. His eyewitness account of its inhabitants’ struggle under Israeli apartheid was an early indication of what would go on to be a career of unwavering commitment to anti-imperialism, which culminated in his rejection of an OBE in 2003. The event is also in collaboration with literary editor, activist and publisher Kadija George. Together, Zephaniah, George and PTBO invite guests Raymond Antrobus, Salena Godden and Dean Atta to share their memories of the man and his work.

Machine Whispers

Scottish Storytelling Centre, 22-24 Nov

Pandora’s box has been opened. The genie is out of the lamp. The shit has hit the fan. Whichever analogy you prefer, the bottom line is that AI has well and truly arrived and shows no signs of fucking off anytime soon. On a recent episode of This American Life, David Kestenbaum posits why writing a poem is one of the first things anyone who is encountering an AI text generator asks it to do. “Maybe [it’s] because it’s the most human act of creation you can think of,” he says. But if that is the case, can we trust AI to translate our poetry into other languages? Pip Thornton and Evan Morgan’s interactive installation asks the question.

Judge for yourself the attempts of their AI translator to capture the beauty of a real writer’s poetry. Whether you think justice is served to the text will have you contemplating the role of human translators in the age of machine learning. Thornton and Morgan will also be joined by poet and translator Rachel Rankin for a discussion on the subject, AI and the (Un)translatability of Poetry.