2026 festival round-up

If you were in Stonehaven on the first weekend of September, you'd have seen the population swelled by around 100 poets and poetry lovers, sharing words, meeting old and new friends, socialising and generally squeezing every drop of poetry from the weekend. But the festival's activities began long before September, and it wasn't all about the performances, brilliant as they were. Over the summer, volunteer trustees were all over Scotland, visiting and staging take-overs at community poetry events to spread the word about our accessible festival.

Poet Jo Gilbert ran a series of workshops with students at Mackie Academy, looking at a range of poetics from zines to performance.

More students joined Ken Cockburn on a Poetry Walk during the festival weekend, and workshops for adults ranged from 'Scots for Fearties and Newbies' to 'Unnatural Ecopoetics', via 'Liminality' and ekphrastic poetry.

Other highlights included our first Scots Showcase, hosted by Taylor Dyson and Calum Kelly, and the moving Peace, Justice and Resistance event at Stonehaven's War Memorial.

Once again, the weather gave us its full support so we must add our thanks to the weather gods along with those who made the whole festival so special - performers, audience, workshop facilitators and attenders, hosts and comperes, and all the folk in background who kept it all running. Braw, every ane o ye!