Workshops | Perth Poetry Festival 2026

Facilitator

Workshop Title

Day

Date

Time

Alex Creece

Hodgepodge Poetry Workshop

Friday

28 August

9:15 am – 11:15 am

Description

Alex Creece leads a hands-on collage poetry workshop using found materials such as magazines, advertisements and pamphlets to create new poetic works.

Drawing on their experience as both a writer and visual artist, Alex will guide participants through making collage poems and explore how this playful, accessible form can help demystify poetry and open up new ways of engaging with language.

Biography

Alex Creece is a writer and visual artist whose practice moves across poetry, experimentation and image-making. Their work brings a playful, exploratory approach to language, form and the possibilities that emerge when poetry moves beyond the conventional page.

Facilitator

Workshop Title

Day

Date

Time

Allan Boyd & Perth Slam

ARE YOU READY?
PERTH SLAM PERFORMANCE POETRY WORKSHOP!

Friday

28 August

11:30 am – 1:30 pm

Description

Hosted by veteran Perth performance poet Allan Boyd (aka the antipoet) and the Perth Slam crew, this interactive workshop drills into the nitty gritty of contemporary poetry slam performance.

We'll answer all your slam questions. We unpack a recent successful slam poem and figure out what makes a great performance.

You'll also witness a live performance poem and get a rare opportunity to discuss the poem with its author.

We'll do some creative writing exercises, practise hands-on microphone technique, understand breathing, gesture, posture, expression, audience interaction and timing.

This workshop is for new poets and old. It's for anyone who wants to enter a poetry slam. Or those who are just curious about performance poetry in general. Or anyone wanting to hone their stagecraft for their next poetry reading.

Feel free to bring along a short poem. If there's time, we will listen and critique.

All poets, all ages, all welcome!

Biography

Perth Slam is a community-run, open and dynamic monthly poetry slam hosted by Allan Boyd (aka the antipoet). Now in its 11th year, Perth Slam provides a safe and inclusive place to showcase and experience fresh local spoken word poetry and coordinates the WA heats of the annual Australian Poetry Slam.

Allan Boyd has facilitated poetry workshops across Australia since 1996. He taught Experimental Writing and Performance Poetry at Curtin University from 2010–2015 and has more recently delivered Perth Slam workshops at Margaret River Readers & Writers Festival and Bunbury Fringe.

Facilitator

Workshop Title

Day

Date

Time

Oormila V. Prahlad

From Memory to Voice:
Transforming Lived Experience into Spoken Word

Saturday

29 August

9:15 am – 11:15 am

Description

How do we draw on our memories to write poems? How do poems then become voice? This two-hour workshop invites poets and writers of all ages to explore how lived experience can be transformed into powerful spoken-word work. Through guided prompts, close listening and discussion, participants will explore how memory, identity, culture, place, family and language can become sources of poetic material. We will consider how moments, both ordinary and extraordinary, can carry emotional and poetic weight, and how these moments can be drawn upon to create vivid imagery, rhythm and voice. The workshop will introduce techniques for shaping spoken-word pieces, including structure, pacing, repetition and oral delivery. Participants will be encouraged to experiment with their own material in a safe and supportive environment, with the aim of developing a draft piece they can continue to refine beyond the session.

Biography

Oormila V. Prahlad is a multi-award winning Indian-Australian artist and poet whose works have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Black Bough Poetry (UK), The Salons and Poetry Sydney collaborations. She won the Bankstown Poetry Slam at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival and the Bread and Butter Slampionship, and has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is the author of Patchwork Fugue and A Second Life in Eighty-eight Keys, with a second full-length collection forthcoming from Five Islands Press in 2026. She is the inaugural Writer in Residence at Woollahra Libraries.

Facilitator

Workshop Title

Day

Date

Time

Ender Başkan

First Thought Best Thought

Saturday

29 August

11:30 am – 1:30 pm

Description

All writers receive the advice 'find your voice' but how? Learn to harness your own sensibility, trust your intuition and go with your flow in this workshop drawing upon surrealist, dadaist and zen practices of language play and automatic writing.

Biography

Ender Başkan is a poet, novelist, small-press publisher and bookseller. The winner of the 2021 Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize, his poems have been published in HEAT, Meanjin, Overland, Cordite, Unusual Work and Best of Australian Poems. His novel, A Portrait of Alice as a Young Man, was published in 2019. He is the co-founder of Vre Books press, Agog poetry readings and Study experimental space. His debut poetry collection, Two Hundred Million Musketeers, published by Giramondo in 2025, was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards.

Facilitator

Workshop Title

Day

Date

Time

Emilie Collyer

Poetry Where We Meet The World

Sunday

30 August

9:15 am – 11:15 am

Description

Hopeful. Overwhelmed. Sparked with anger. Moved by beauty.

This workshop will explore how we write poetry that emerges from the many ways we meet the world, from moments situated deeply within ourselves to the ways we encounter public, social and political pressures.

We will look at examples of contemporary poetry that engage with this meeting in different ways and then generate a number of new poems, using a range of techniques.

Emilie facilitates a warm and welcoming environment where all ideas are encouraged. Poetry is everywhere and everybody has poetry in them. This workshop will help you tap into your unique voice.

Biography

Emilie Collyer lives and writes on unceded Wurundjeri Country. She has two poetry collections published by Vagabond Press: Do you have anything less domestic?, winner of the Five Islands Prize, and As If I’m Really There. Her poetry has twice been recognised in the Gwen Harwood and Newcastle poetry prizes and in the Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Her play Super won the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama. She is currently under commission with The Street Theatre in Canberra. She teaches poetry and is an experienced workshop facilitator who has been running writing workshops for more than twenty years.

Facilitator

Workshop Title

Day

Date

Time

Cyndy Moody

Poetry for the Season

Sunday

30 August

11:30 am – 1:30 pm

Description

A gentle, beginner-friendly workshop exploring:

• the sounds of Noongar language

• Djilba, the season of first spring

• poetry inspired by seasonal change and renewal

• a mix of writing and drawing

Participants should bring pen and paper.