Perth Poetry Festival 2025

Festival Workshops

at Vincent Library

Six Workshops. One Weekend. Countless Lines.

Dates: Friday 29 August – Sunday 31 August 2025

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

Spend your festival weekend immersed in poetic practice.

Across three days, WA Poets Inc presents six focused, generative workshops at Vincent Library. Led by a diverse lineup of award-winning poets and skilled facilitators, these sessions invite writers of all backgrounds to deepen their craft, play with form, and connect through language.

Workshop Schedule*

Workshop 1: Friday 29 August | 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Facilitator: Melissa Domiati
Workshop 2: Friday 29 August | 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Facilitator: Indrani Perera
Workshop 3: Saturday 30 August | 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Facilitator: David Stavanger
Workshop 4: Saturday 30 August | 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Facilitator: Magdalena Ball
Workshop 5: Sunday 31 August | 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Facilitator: Paris Rosemont
Workshop 6: Sunday 31 August | 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Facilitator: Tim Loveday

You may register for one or multiple workshops. Each session is ticketed separately with general and member pricing. Content and approach vary across facilitators, allowing you to tailor your weekend of writing to suit your interests and rhythm.

Workshop Details

Facilitator	Workshop Title	Day	Date	Time
Melissa Domiati	Cultivating Calm	Friday	29 August	9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Description

Engage in a meditative writing experience to cultivate calm through poetry with award-winning local poet, Melissa Domiati. Sharing from her poetry collection Flowers from the Farm, you will be immersed into the writing process to help you ‘let shadows fall behind you’ and ‘make room to bloom,’ learning ways to express your own unique voice through poetry.

Biography

Melissa Domiati is a prize winning poet & educator with a passion for empowering others to share their authentic voices. Her poetic reflections after a near death experience, culminated in her poetry collection ‘Flowers from the Farm’ about women's empowerment, love, loss and the sacred space inside us. She regularly conducts workshops, writing circles and shares her poetry across the globe. Melissa is a proud member of WA Poets and City Farm Writer's group and 'writes to breathe', keenly aware and appreciative of the cathartic benefits of writing within a supportive community.

Facilitator	Workshop Title	Day	Date	Time
Indrani Perera	Game On! Word Play for Poets	Friday	29 August	11:30 AM – 1:30 PM

Description

Find the joy in writing and learn to play with your words in this workshop packed with fun and games. In this unique workshop with Naarm/Melbourne poet and board gamer Indrani Perera, you will create your very own custom poetry game with which you can write original poems! Exercises include creating a personal word bank, customising a die and making word cards. And of course, writing poems! Play isn’t just for kids - it stimulates the brain and enhances cognitive abilities such as critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. All necessary skills for poets. Suitable for all ages and abilities but it's especially great for the young at heart and those looking to lighten up a little. This is the workshop that puts the fun back into writing!

Biography

Indrani Perera is a Sri Lankan/German/Australian poet, Pocketry Almanack editor, Circus of Similes creator and 3CR Spoken Word show host who lives, writes and plays on Wurrundjeri Country in Naarm/Melbourne. Indrani is the author of Defenestration and pas de deux. Her poems have appeared on receipts at Yarra Libraries in Naarm, on the big screen at Northbridge Piazza in Boorloo and on phones for Red Room Poetry at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Her poetry has been widely anthologised, published in Australian and international literary journals and shortlisted for major Australian poetry awards. Indrani performs on the open mic and was a National Guest Poet at the 2023 Perth Poetry Festival. www.indraniperera.com

Facilitator	Workshop Title	Day	Date	Time
David Stavanger	Case Notes: Capturing the Lived Experience	Saturday	30 August	9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Description

Anyone who writes about madness with certainty has never been mad, I’m certain of it. Certainty is the strangest thing.

An accessible introductory poetry workshop for anyone looking for some ways to write into their lived experience on their terms, focusing on the mental health space, the framing of absence, reclaiming/repurposing institutional language, and utilising daily absurd details and poetic experimentation to document (and distill) aspects of this shared fragmentary life.

Drawing on his collections Case Notes and The Drop Off, and work producing the MAD Poetry project and co-editing the anthology Admissions: Voices With Mental Health, award-winning poet and former psychologist David Stavanger will lead a series of structured exercises and discussions in a small group setting. Limited places, no previous poetry experience needed.

Biography

David Stavanger is a poet, producer, and lapsed psychologist living on Wodi Wodi Dharawal land. He is the co-editor of Solid Air: Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP, 2019), Admissions: Voices Within Mental Health (Upswell, 2022), and is the author of Case Notes, which won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Prize for Poetry—his new collection is The Drop Off (Upswell, 2025). David works as an Artistic Director at Red Room Poetry.

Facilitator	Workshop Title	Day	Date	Time
Magdalena Ball	Memoir in Verse Writing the non-traditional memoir	Saturday	30 August	11:30 AM – 1:30 PM

Description

Everyone has a story and every story bisects history in one way or another. Look close enough and you will invariably come across trauma or hardship, along with gaps, and many other stories to navigate. Verse is a particularly powerful form for the memoir, because of the way it allows you to engage with what’s missing or can not be known, compress time, use rhythm, visual imagery and sound to get at emotive or multiple truths, and immerse the reading into the heart of experience. This hands-on workshop is for all writers who want to explore story through poetry. We will explore process, using memory, finding and using primary and secondary source material, style and voice choices, creating an arc, and lots more. You will leave this workshop with several of your own poems and new ways of exploring your stories.

Biography

Magdalena Ball is a novelist, poet, reviewer, interviewer, Sustainability Manager, Vice President of Flying Island Poetry Community and Managing Editor of Compulsive Reader, one of Australia's most respected online review sites, which has been publishing high-quality book reviews since 1997. Her work has appeared in an extensive list of journals and anthologies, and has won or shortlisted in many local and international awards. She is the author of multiple novels and poetry books, including, most recently, Bobish, a verse memoir published by Puncher & Wattmann in 2023. Find out more at magdalenaball.com

Facilitator	Workshop Title	Day	Date	Time
Paris Rosemont	Exploring your personal universe	Sunday	31 August	9:00 AM – 11:00 AM

Description

This workshop with award-winning Sydney-based Thai-Australian poet Paris Rosemont will help you tap into your personal universe to unlock your poetic potential. Dive into explorations of the self and the things that have shaped you into becoming who you are. Paris will guide you through a series of introspective prompts, case studies, and generative exercises, drawing upon the richness of your personal universe to help you discover your unique poetic voice.

Biography

Paris Rosemont is a Thai-Australian poet, educator, and author of Banana Girl (2023) and Barefoot Poetess (2025). Her debut was shortlisted for several poetry book awards, and her writing has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies worldwide including Australian Poetry Journal, Rabbit, and Sky Island Journal. Paris has appeared on judging panels including the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards 2025 and Sydney Fringe Festival 2024. She enjoys sharing her love of poetry via teaching, and through performance. One producer hailed her as the ‘wildest of wildcards’. Paris may be found at parisrosemont.com

Facilitator	Workshop Title	Day	Date	Time
Tim Loveday	Writing Narrative Verse	Sunday	31 August	11:30 AM – 1:30 PM

Description

What is narrative verse? And how can an understanding of its unique technical and aesthetic properties enhance not only your poetry but your writing overall? In this 2-hour workshop, learn how to harness concentrated syntax, lineation, rhythm, sonics, imagery, figurative language and poetic economy to inject poetry – in its myriad forms – into your stories.

Biography

Tim Loveday is a poet, writer and baby academic. His work explores class, masculinity, online radicalisation and climate collapse. He won the 2022 & 2024 Dorothy Porter Poetry Awards, the 2025 Calanthe Prize and the 2023 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Award, came runner-up in the 2024 Cloncurry Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the 2023 David Harold Tribe Poetry Prize, the 2024 Griffith Review Emerging Voices Prize, the 2024 Best Australian Yarn and the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize. Tim teaches Creative Writing at Unimelb and RMIT. He is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Unimelb. More: timloveday.com.

Registration Tips

Register early to secure limited seats.
Bring your favourite writing tools.
Workshops are suitable for all levels unless otherwise stated.

Accessibility:

Vincent Library is wheelchair accessible. Please let us know if you have specific access requirements.

Places are limited. Early booking is recommended to secure your spot.

Visit perthpoetryfestival.com for more program details.

Book one, or book them all. Make it your poetry weekend.

Contact the host of Workshops | Perth Poetry Festival 2025