Workshops | Perth Poetry Festival 2024

Perth Poetry Festival 2024 - Workshop Program

Welcome to the Perth Poetry Festival 2024! We are excited to present a series of engaging workshops designed to inspire and connect poets and poetry enthusiasts of all levels. Join us for a rich lineup of events led by acclaimed poets and writers from around the country and overseas. Mark your calendars and immerse yourself in the transformative power of poetry.

Secrecy vs. Privacy: Writing from the Vault

Kerry Greer

Date: 17/08/2024 (Saturday)

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: Poetry is one of the most intimate mediums for expression allowing us to voice experiences that might be too heavy too vast for everyday conversation. With the force of a whisper—heard up close in the dark—poetry can bring us to our knees can ask us not to turn away. The abject the difficult the uncomfortable—these are spaces we can enter through poetry finding honesty tenderness and a sense that we are not alone even in our solitude. How do we access those hidden spaces and allow them to find light through poetry? Where do we draw the line between the private life of the human (real and solid) and the secret life of the mind (numinous infinite).
This workshop will involve a series of readings as well as a brief discussion of my experiences writing about difficult subject matter. The workshop will conclude with 20 to 30 minutes to write and share material (if participants feel comfortable). A list of Further Reading will be provided.

Bio: Kerry Greer is a poet and writer based in Western Australia. She received the Venie Holmgren Prize for Environmental Poetry in 2021. Kerry has been shortlisted for the ABR Calibre Essay Prize the Stuart Hadow Short Story Prize the Woollahra Digital Literary Award the Newcastle Poetry Prize the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize the ACU Poetry Prize the Bruce Dawe Poetry Prize and more. She was awarded a micro-residency at the 2023 Perth Poetry Festival and performed work written during the residency at the Festival Finale. Kerry's debut poetry collection The Sea Chest was published by Recent Work Press in November 2023.

Pop Culture Poetry

Alan Fyfe and Emily Sun

Date: 17/08/2024 (Saturday)

Time: 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: Pop culture is an up and coming influence on Australian poetry seen in places like the noted work of Andrew Sutherland and Madison Godfrey the coming 'Pop' edition of Cordite.
Join Emily and Alan as they take you through a tag team learning experience to workshop your own poems on movies music memes or whatever parts of pop culture you like best.
Just bring along yourselves and something to write on - on a device or on paper your choice.

Bio: Alan Fyfe is the author of T (Transit Lounge) and the newly released poetry collection G-d Sleep and Chaos (Gazebo Books). Emily Sun author of the poetry collection Voiciferate (Fremantle Press) is the founding creator and co-editor of 'Hello Keanu', an anthology of poetry celebrating the pop cultural phenomenon that is Keanu Reeves. Together they are a multi-ethnic force of nature who have made their mark on national and international literary awards literature activism performance tertiary writing education and stone cold sweet-as poems.

Healing Through Poetry

Samantha Melia

Date: 18/08/2024 (Sunday)

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: Discover the therapeutic potential of poetry in this workshop led by Samantha Melia. Participants will engage in writing exercises designed to promote healing and self-discovery.

Bio: Samantha Melia is a poet and therapist who integrates her knowledge of mental health with her passion for poetry offering a unique approach to personal growth and healing.

Translating Blind

Judith Huang

Date: 18/08/2024 (Sunday)

Time: 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: In this workshop participants pretend to translate a poem from a language they don't know to trick the mind into producing an original poem. In a fascinating exercise using cognates shapes of words and your imagination produce a brand new work with a foreign poet's work as a jumping off point. The facilitator will provide prompts along the exercise to guide you and as an experienced translator show you that languages are not as different as you might think even if you don't know them.

Bio: Judith Huang is an Australian-based Singaporean author poet science fiction translator serial-arts-collective-founder and multimedia artist. Her first novel Sofia and the Utopia Machine was shortlisted for the EBFP 2017 and Singapore Book Awards 2019. A three-time winner of the Foyle Young Poet of the Year Award Judith graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in English and taught creative and academic writing at Yale-NUS College. She has published original work in Prairie Schooner Asia Literary Review Portside Review Creatrix QLRS and Cha as well as being a founding member of the Spittoon Collective. Her website is www.judithhuang.com

Writing Vulnerably

Paul Kohn

Date: 22/08/2024 (Thursday)

Time: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

Location: WA Poets Inc Office

Description: This workshop seeks to be accessible to writers of any age and stage in their career.
The intention of this session is to give attendees an appreciation and deeper understanding of what vulnerability means working through some examples of vulnerable writing and learning why writing vulnerably is important to both the writer and the readers/listeners.
This workshop aims to assist writers to think and practice vulnerability and authenticity in their own writing style and voice. It aims to provide resources skills and tools to help them continue writing and sharing vulnerably and authentically in a way that is safe for them.
In this interactive workshop poet Paul R Kohn will take you on a journey of how readers and listeners connect with vulnerable writing how writing vulnerably helps us be more real with ourselves in our day-to-day life and as writers and how it helps us as individuals to be authentic with those who read and hear our words.

Bio: Paul R Kohn is a writer of poetry and short stories performer of spoken word and creator of music and lyrics. Residing in South Australia he’s featured at local and national events sharing words from his debut poetry collection ‘Soul Refraction’ (Dragonfly Publishing). His words have also been published in a number of national and international anthologies both online and in print. Paul writes as a way of processing understanding healing and growing and shares his written and spoken word poetry all over Australia and the world in the hope that it helps others too.

Etc.

Beth Kirkland & Maree Dawes

Date: 24/08/2024 (Saturday)

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: Etc. will be creating collaborative poems. Maree produces intuitive prose poetry through stream of consciousness writing. The work is then passed to Beth who finds another layer of meaning and highlights this with water colour. This highlighting may magnify the original intent of Maree’s work or spark off in a different direction. This process creates multiple finished works that are stacked or hung for others to read. The pieces may be spoken if the venue permits. This work is suited to cafes quirky corners and other public spaces.

Bio: Etc. comprises Maree Dawes and Beth Kirkland. Etc is interested in improvisation and in the risk and edginess this process can evoke in both the creators and audience.
Beth lives in Kinjarling-Albany W.A. A painter for many years she has turned her creative energy to writing poetry and flash fiction. She has had work published with Night Parrot Press and in Westerly. Maree is a Kinjarling-Albany poet with three published poetry collections. As Etc. Maree and Beth respond to themes narrative visual art and music to create performance poetry. One previous theme was paper and its role in the creative process.

Forming/Transforming:
Using Lyric Encounter to Draft New Work

Willo Drummond

Date: 24/08/2024 (Saturday)

Time: 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: This masterclass will explore ways of ‘reading-and-writing’ in the intersubjective space of lyric encounter. Participants will engage in activities that combine reading and writing as a unified practice using responsive techniques to generate drafts for new poems. The workshop aims to provide a space where participants can develop their poetic craft by exploring themes such as transformation eco-poetics and queer writing.

Bio: Dr Willo Drummond is a queer poet who lives and writes on Dharug and Gundungurra land. Her poetry is published in Cordite Poetry Review Australian Poetry Journal The Canberra Times and elsewhere. Willo has been the recipient of a Career Development Grant for poetry from the Australia Council for the Arts (2020) runner-up in the Tom Collins Poetry Prize (2021) and shortlisted for the Val Vallis Award (2022). Her debut poetry collection MOON WRASSE (Puncher & Wattmann) recently featured in the Aesop Queer Library (2024) and was Commended in the Five Islands Poetry Prize for a First Book of Poetry (2023).

Poetry in Motion

Sari Bennett

Date: 25/08/2024 (Sunday)

Time: 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: Poetry in motion workshop explores the stories held within our bodies and behaviours our lives and lineages. Participants are guided through a series of activities aimed at cultivating embodied expression through the physicality of performing spoken word.

Bio: Sari Bennett is a WA based writer and performance poet who lives on Molloy Island. She is a collector of moments and a seeker of the sacred hidden within the mundane. Her writing style is unique in the way it weaves whimsical imagery with hard hitting concepts challenging the status quo and questioning human behaviors. with a background in dance martial arts acrobatics and physical theatre Saris embodied performances breathe life into her heartfelt poetry. Over the past 6 years she has performed at various festivals and events including the Denmark Festival of Voice Nannup Music Festival Wild Village women's festival and Nanga Music Festival.

Writing as an Act of Hope

Reneé Pettitt-Schipp

Date: 25/08/2024 (Sunday)

Time: 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: In this workshop Reneé will explore how writing can help keep us in touch with the joy of living on this wondrous planet we call home by writing into the confronting times we are living in. Reneé will share the way poets through the decades have steered us toward joy and connection as well as strategies that have supported her to write hope-ward. There will also be plenty of opportunities in this session for writers to draft poems that attempt in big and small ways to navigate both darkness and light.

Bio: Reneé Pettitt-Schipp’s work with asylum seekers in detention on Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands inspired her first collection of poetry The Sky Runs Right Through Us. The Sky Runs Right Through Us was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett manuscript prize the CHASS Australia prize and in 2019 won the WA Premier’s Literary Award for an Emerging Writer. Reneé’s non-fiction work about the islands was released in June 2023 by Fremantle Press. Reneé currently lives in WA’s Great Southern where she is working on her second poetry collection entitled 'All the Stories We Do Not Know'.

Coming to Nothing:
Poetry as Practice

Morgan Yasbincek

Date: 25/08/2024 (Sunday)

Time: 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Location: NW Room SLWA

Description: Within her robust and delicate collection “Coming to Nothing” Morgan Yasbincek simultaneously explores and invokes a constellation of poetic voices that all ultimately resolve into the nothing which gives them birth. Presence gives way to absence and absence hints at something beyond a restoration of presence something her poems take seriously and ground through disruption ‘the vowels of silence’ and the truth of life lived grieved and continued.
Ever becoming and eternally un-becoming and with Sappho as compañera and the Fragment pointing to what always is Morgan’s crafting of words awakens a world we have always known and always failed to name.
Morgan will showcase works from her collection to discuss themes of impermanence and transformation. This will segue and delve into engagement with writing practices providing participants with insights and techniques to enhance their poetic craft.

Bio: Morgan Yasbincek has published four collections of poetry and one novel most recently the poetry collection Coming to nothing in late 2023.
Her first collection Night Reversing won the Anne Elder and Mary Gilmore awards. Her second collection Firelick was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s C.J. Dennis Award. Her third collection White Camel was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Kenneth Slessor Award. Her novel liv was shortlisted for the ASAL Gold Medal Award and highly commended by the Victorian Premier’s Award. She lives on Whadjuk-Noongar Boodja works in library services and continues to develop her writing practice.

We invite you to join us for these enriching workshops at the Perth Poetry Festival 2024. Book your spot now and be part of a transformative poetic journey this festival. We look forward to seeing you there!