REVIEW: Loud Poets, I Am Loud CIC, EdFringe 2025 ★★★★★

Loud Poets have been bringing the very best of the Scottish poetry scene to Fringe stages for over a decade, and this year is no different. With an all-star line-up of the Loud Poets themselves (Katie Ailes, Mark Gallie and Kevin Mclean), onstage live accompaniment from guitarist Jack Hinks and a mystery guest poet bringing a fresh voice to each new performance of the show, Loud Poets is a celebration of all things spoken word which is designed to entertain both poetry lovers and poetry sceptics alike. 

“You cannot trust poets,”

Mark Gallie warns at the start of the show, a bright onstage spotlight making his words entertainingly dramatic. 

“They are sneaky little things.”

Sneaky indeed. The first few performances from these poetry titans appear on the surface to be enjoyably disparate, but Gallie’s playful introductory warning is also an introduction to the use of pace, timing and physicality. A comedy PowerPoint presentation poem from Ailes looks at first to be chosen for its fun themes, but then leads perfectly into first a more complex PowerPoint dual poem from Ailes and Mclean, then into more experimental usage of PowerPoints during poems from Gallie and Mclean later in the show.

An offhand joke about Table Top Role Playing Games turns out to be a set-up for an extraordinarily complicated duo poem which includes audience participation, a butter knife, rhymes all about the joys of dice rolling and dragon slaying and Kevin Mclean practically turning into a Scottish Brennan Lee Mulligan as Loud Poets create Dimension20-Playing-Madison-Square-Garden worthy levels of excitement in a room full of nerdy creatives living their absolute best life. (On the night this reporter went along to the show the onstage audience participant rolled a Nat20 and everyone lost their damn minds.)

Loud Poets starts off with light-hearted flair, but as the show progresses the initial fun tricks settle into a more grounded part of the performance. Dean Tsang was the guest poet for this reviewed show, and in his two poems he showed a remarkable ability to mix emotional insight with wry humour. Lines like, “we meet like paintings do: a brief exchange before being carried into our own worlds” left the audience with a sense of quiet loss and subtle beauty, and his poem Where Would You Put Me, Reform UK? seethes with a clever, searing anger and was powerfully performed alongside the growling snarl of Hinks’s improvised guitar licks.

“Poetry has always been an activist art form,” says Ailes, and it is in the activist section of this show where the pure craft and skill of the Loud Poets is on full display. Mclean’s searingly powerful poem for Aaron Bushnell is the stand-out work of this segment, his lines about plastic toy soldiers melting under magnifying glass heat and the “conveyor belt of soldiers” made from “disposable citizens” unflinching in their rage-filled sorrow. Bushnell is described as, “a toy solider haunted by the horrors the world had to show him.” As the Palestinian flag is displayed onstage, the words “Free Palestine” echoing around the Scottish Storytelling Centre auditorium, it is impossible not to feel deeply moved both by Bushnell’s ultimate protest and by the unending horrors of this still ongoing genocide. 

The show ends with all three Loud Poets coming onstage for a trio piece which works as a sly tie-in for all the poetic showmanship elements introduced throughout the evening – sneaky poets – and encourages the audience to keep on exploring this world of rhyming words and uncovered truths. 

“What is a poem?”

Ailes, Gallie and Mclean offer various suggestions, their words a playful linguistic dance as their three voices wind around one another in a push and pull of separation and commonality. A poem, they decide, “can be many things”, and there is no better proof of this fact than the astonishing range of spoken word talent seen during this Loud Poets show. 

You may not be able to trust a poet when it comes to emotional truthfulness, but one thing is clear: you can trust these poets to show you an exceptionally good time.

You can catch Loud Poets at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on 21st August at 20:30 (1 hr 30 mins). Tickets are available through the EdFringe Online Box Office.

Image Credit: I Am Loud and Gilad Zinman