Cavort!: A Prose Poetry Workshop

About the workshop:

This workshop will share a playful model of generative writing that an international group of poets has been using now for the better part of a decade. Using the prose poem form, these poets, in a practice sometimes called ‘authorised theft’,  share drafts of poems via group email and borrow each other’s phrasing and images to create their own prose poems. This workshop will briefly review the prose poem form, but mostly it will be an invitation to play with writing it using other poets’ poems as a starting point. Come to this workshop ready to share, play, and cavort!

About the facilitators:

Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra. She is the holder of the inaugural ACT Poet of the Year Award, as well as many other literary awards. She was the ACT editor for the Australian Book Review's States of Poetry mini-anthologies (2015–2017), chair of the NSW Premier's Literary Award (Kenneth Slessor Award for Poetry, 2017–2018), and is co-editor of the Australasian Association of Writing Program's literary journal, Meniscus, and of the scholarly journal Axon: Creative Explorations.

Jen's recent works include the scholarly volumes Gender and the Creative Labour Market (with Scott Brook et al., Palgrave 2022); Art and Human Rights: Contemporary Asian Contexts (with Caroline Turner; Manchester UP, 2016); Researching Creative Writing (Frontinus, 2015); and the Oxford University Press bibliography entry for Pierre Bourdieu (2017). Her recent volumes of poetry include The Daily News (Recent Work Press 2024, shortlisted for the ACT Book of the Year 2025); Moving Targets (RWP 2018); and Stolen Stories, Borrowed Lines (Mark Time Press, 2015).  

Kimberly K. Williams is a Lecturer at Central Queensland University and an award-winning poet and is the author of three books of poetry. Her second book, Sometimes a Woman (Recent Work Press 2021), about the madams and prostitutes who helped to settle the US “Wild West,” won the 2022 WILLA Literary Award for Poetry (USA). Her third book, Still Lives (Gazebo Books 2022), won a Canberra Critics Award in 2023 and was short-listed for the ACT Poetry Book of the Year. Her fourth book of poems, Following the Wagons: A Poetic Trail, was published in July 2026 by Liquid Amber Press. 

DETAILS

Workshop Date: 29 September 2026

Time: 6:00 - 8:00 pm

Location: Online via Zoom (an access link will be distributed in the week leading up to the workshop)

COST OF PROGRAM:

• General tickets

  $40

• MARION members

  $30

• Student tickets

  $20

MARION offers 2 semi-subsidised places in each program for those experiencing financial hardship. This is on a first come, first served basis — email creative@marion.ink