Enough Said Poetry Slam is a slamily where you can share your poems/words/stories/etc, listen to other people share theirs, click for your faves and maybe even win a prize!

For our first slam of 2023, we've partnered up with Heroines Festival—the festival of women's writing about women—to feature three of their artists (and their Director!) to perform together. You read that right, you get FOUR featured poets for the price of one! Don't miss these talented women.

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FEATURE POET: Sara C. Motta, Paris Rosemont, Lin Blythe & Sarah Nicholson
SUPPORT FEATURE: Paige Jenkins

6:30pm - SLAM SIGN-UP
7:00pm - POETRY STARTS

ENTRY

$10 - standard
$5 - unwaged/student/concession

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VENUE

Entry to The Forge is down a short driveway between Gwynneville Bakery and The Asian Takeaway on Gipps Road. It's a two-minute walk from the nearest free bus stop, a less than fifteen minutes walk from North Wollongong train station, and there's plenty of free parking on the surrounding streets.

There is unfortunately no disabled access toilet available at the venue (there is a portaloo), however the venue is wheelchair accessible.

Drinks are for sale from Barley Grass Bar on the night.

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POETRY SLAM RULES

Sign up at the door when you arrive if you'd like to perform. Everyone is welcome, from bedroom poets to experienced performers.

3 min time limit, no props or costumes, jump up on stage with a mic and share your original poems, stories, raps, rants and monologues with a live and engaged audience.

Random people from the audience become the judges, and the highest-scoring poet wins! 1st, 2nd & 3rd place PRIZES to be awarded!

But remember: The points are not the point, the point is poetry!

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FEATURED POETS

Sara C. Motta is a proud Mestiza-salvaje of Colombia-Chibcha/Muisca, Eastern European Jewish and Celtic lineages currently living, loving and re-existiendo on the unceded lands of the Awabakal and Worimi peoples, NSW, so-called Australia. She is mother, survivor of state and intimate violences, poet, curandera, bare-breasted philosopher, popular educator, and Associate Professor at the University of Newcastle, NSW. Sara has worked for over two decades with raced and feminised communities in struggle resistances/re-existencias in, against and beyond heteronormative capitalist-coloniality in Europe, Latin America and Australia and co-created numerous decolonising pedagogical projects of radical healing and community wellbeing. She has published widely in academic and activist-community outlets. Her latest book Liminal Subjects: Weaving (Our) Liberation (Rowman and Littlefield) is winner of the 2020 best Gender Theory and Feminist Book, International Studies Associate (ISA).

Paris Rosemont is a poet with a passion for the arts. She has crafted award-winning poetry that has been described as ‘edgy confessional’ and ‘visceral hyperrealism’. Paris’ poetry was selected by Red Room Poetry for publication in Upswell Publishing’s anthology Admissions, alongside established writers, musicians and notable public figures. Having received a scholarship to study at the Australian Theatre for Young People, Paris combines her love for poetry and theatre into the exploration of the art of performance poetry. She has performed her poetry to live audiences in venues ranging from Sappho Books to West Side Slam to Sydney University’s Chau Chak Wing Museum. Paris was the first poet invited to perform a solo set of her original poetry at Rhapsody Revue and is a swing poet for the Sydney Fringe Festival 2022. Paris was a judge for the Living Stories Writing Competition 2022. She is also a WestWords 2022 Academian and a Frontier Poetry scholarship recipient.

Lin Blythe is a proud Eurasian woman, socialist activist and lover of speculative fiction. The biggest influences on her writing, who also happen to be her favourite authors, are Ursula K Le Guin, Alice Pung, Ray Bradbury, Ibram X Kendi, Alastair Reynolds, Ken Liu, Martha Wells and Aliette De Boddard. To her, stories are both an escape from the world and a catalyst for progress in the world. Often, Lin finds herself writing about her family’s intergenerational trauma, space and vampires. Her essays, short fiction and poetry have been published in Overland, the UTS 2022 Anthology: Turn Left on Red Permitted After Stopping and the Moon Orchard (2022) audiobook.

Dr Sarah Nicholson is the Creative Director of The Heroines Festival, Editor of the Heroines Anthology, and Director of both the South Coast Writers Centre, and the South Coast Writers Festival. She has been a director of the National Young Writers’ Festival, an awardee of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust for Literature, a recipient of a Writer’s and Translator’s Centre of Rhodes fellowship, and an Emerging Writer in Residence for the Katherine Susannah Pritchard Writers’ Centre. She has a PhD in feminist philosophy and previously led student learning as an academic in the field of creative arts, religion, philosophy and literature. She is also the author of The Evolutionary Journey of Woman and an editor of Integral Voices on Sex, Gender and Sexuality.

SUPPORT FEATURE

Paige Jenkins is an 18-year-old university student in her second year studying a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Journalism who has spent the last year finding her way through adulthood via poetry. Paige self-published her first collection of poems Seventeen last year and is always working on new material. She is incredibly excited for the opportunity to open 2023's Enough Said Poetry Slams as our February support feature!

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We acknowledge our events take place on the land of the Wodi Wodi people of the Dharawal nation and pay our respects.

Enough Said Poetry Slam is supported by the South Coast Writers Centre and The Dire Theatre Company.