November Bankstown Poetry Slam ft. Evelyn Araluen

Welcome to Australia's largest regular poetry slam! 

THIS IS OUR LAST POETRY SLAM OF THE YEAR!!
We're closing out 2025 with a completely stellar feature artist, Evelyn Araluen!

This slam is part of the launch of her latest book, The Rot. Make sure you rock up and get to see her newest work, live on stage!

Evelyn is a Goorie and Koori poet, editor and researcher. Born and raised on Dharug Country and in the broader Western Sydney Black community, she now lives on Wurundjeri Country where she is a lecturer at the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, a co-editor of Overland Literary Journal and Chairperson for the Board of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. Her debut poetry collection, Dropbear, won the 2022 Stella Prize and the Australian Book Industry Award’s 2022 Small Publisher’s Adult Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the premier’s awards of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Her work has also received the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and a Melbourne Prize Career Development Award.

And The Rot is an unflinching study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world. A liturgy for girlhood in the dying days of late-stage capitalism, these poems expose fraying nerves and tendons of a speaker refusing to avert their gaze from the death of Country, death on Country, and the bloody violence of settler colonies here and afar. Across sleepless nights, fractured alliances and self-destructive coping strategies, The Rot is what happens when poetry swallows more rage than it can console, quiet or ironise – this book demands you ready yourself for a better world.

Anyone can also sign up to perform on the night, this is your chance to win a spot in our 2026 Grand Slam! 

Sign up time is at 6:15 pm!

Your free ticket gets you access to the slam, fresh watermelon, world class poetry and some Bankstown class dad-jokes, courtesy of our MC Bilal Hafda.

For rules on participating in the slam, please see below.

🍉 If you are intending to sign up to perform at the slam, please book a ticket and arrive at 6:15 pm to sign up at the door. There's no guarantee that you will get a spot to perform on the night, if we have more sign-ups than there is time to get through, but we will do our best to make sure we have as many people as possible.

🍉 Regular slam rules apply: No age restrictions/ STRICT 3 minute time limit (try to limit poem introductions)/ no props or music/ if you want to sing in your poem (first of all how dare you be so talented) it should be part of your poem not the whole piece/ poetry must be your original work.

🍉 The top 4 scoring artists will be granted a spot at the Grand Slam.

🍉 Please note that signing up does not guarantee a performance spot. We have a lottery system in place whereby we randomly draw names so that it is fair for everyone, given the high sign up numbers!

Poetry aficionados, appreciators of HipHop and literature that beats with a thunderous heart — you absolutely do not want to miss this!

Please note that BPS is a not-for-profit charitable organisation so any extra donations go a long way in helping us support our artists! Thank you for your generosity ❤️‍🔥

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask away or email info@bankstownpoetryslam.com