Perth Poetry Festival 2025

Pentameters in the Past: Ghosts and Groundbreakers for our Poetry Today

Date: Thursday, 28 August 2025

Time: 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Venue: Vincent Library, 99 Loftus Street, Leederville WA 6007

Join renowned scholar and poet Dennis Haskell as he leads a panel of poets who were there reflecting on Perth’s poetic life from the 1960s through to the 1980s. This dynamic period saw the solid establishment of WA poetry, with a growing sense of the local as connected to the international, the rise of new voices, readings, experimental publishing, and the foundations of WA’s poetic networks as we know them today.

Pentameters in the Past visits the poets, publications, places and creative energies that defined an era and examines the way that even figures from that period who have died, such as Dorothy Hewett, Fay Zwicky, Dorothy Clancy McGowan, Bill Grono and Andrew Burke ghost our presence.

Featuring:

Dennis Haskell AM (Emeritus Professor, UWA)
Glenn Phillips (Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University)
Nicholas Hasluck AM QC (novelist, former Supreme Court Judge)
Mar Bucknell (editor, long‑time WA performance poet)
Shane McCauley (award‑winning Perth poet)

Expect reflections, conversation, and readings that bring the past into dialogue with the present.

Accessibility:

This event is free and fully wheelchair accessible. Please contact us if you have specific access requirements.

All are welcome to attend this rich and thoughtful afternoon of poetry and memory.

Visit perthpoetryfestival.com for more details and bookings.