Push the Boat Out is an award winning festival with a growing year round presence, and a unique and vital part of Scotland’s arts ecology. It is Edinburgh’s first and only poetry festival, and one of only two in the whole of Scotland.

We’re thrilled to launch a brand-new opportunity for 2025! With the generous support of the National Theatre of Scotland, we’re commissioning three bold, poetry-led performance pieces that respond to our theme: Anthropocene: The Human-Altered World. We’re offering £1,500 per commission, along with creative development support, to artists (or groups of artists) based in Scotland to explore the profound impact humans have had on the planet, examining how the things we’ve created have transformed our world, and even our own bodies, in potentially irreversible and unexpected ways. Possible areas of focus include microplastics, forever chemicals, waste, and the built environment.

We welcome innovative works that push the boundaries of poetry and intersect with other art forms, helping to create a powerful, multidisciplinary showcase of responses to this urgent theme. The commissioned pieces will be performed at Push the Boat Out Festival at the Pleasance Theatre in November 2025. 

If your work has something to say about this world we’re shaping (and reshaping), we want to hear from you. Feeling unsure? This is what a previously commissioned artist had to say about their experience:

“Taking part in Push the Boat Out festival and its partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland hugely developed our creative capabilities and opened doors for further professional work and creative explorations across the Scottish art scene.”