Festival review: Push the Boat Out, Summerhall, Edinburgh

A highlight of this year’s Push the Boat Out festival at Summerhall was an event in which three local writers read specially commissioned works about the host building, writes David Pollock

Push The Boat Out, Summerhall, Edinburgh ****

This third instalment of Edinburgh’s annual, poetry-focused Push the Boat Out festival was the first not under the creative directorship of co-founder Jenny Niven – now the director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, which shows how well the past two editions have gone. Mostly held in various corners of Summerhall, nearly 50 performances, talks, workshops and open mics took place over three days.

Amid events featuring Kathleen Jamie and Michael Pedersen, a Friday highlight was A Summerhall Triptych, in which three leading local writers read specially commissioned works about the host building, with a gorgeous and at times show-stealing live electronic backing from David Paul Jones.

Leyla Josephine

Harry Josephine Giles’ musically dramatic delivery revealed fantastical, theoretical rooms containing endless rain, drawers full of screams, and a gallery of empty frames; Iona Lee’s words described “an animal with the power of language”; and Ever Dundas’s piece, applying the cut-up writing technique to text from the Summerhall and Royal Dick vet school’s websites, was funny, dark and otherworldly, imagining the building as “our Edinburgh pet”.

On Saturday evening, Leyla Josephine expertly and irreverently hosted a basement open mic hour – again with evocative improvised musical backing – in which she and other established poets including Katie Ailes, Colin Bramwell and Iona Lee again read alongside various newcomers. These included Kylie, with a memorable piece conflating childhood dreams of stardom with the physics of a dying star, and Erin, on the perceived martyrship of women and medical doctors.

Saturday’s headline event, meanwhile, perfectly merged poetry and music, with a rare and packed-out solo acoustic set from Edinburgh’s Hamish Hawk, an artist with intense charisma, a gift for lyrical storytelling and a poetic flourish to his words, both sung and spoken. Hearing him in this format, revealing a handful of new songs, was a rare and exceptional treat.