Perth Poetry Festival 2026

Festival Workshops

at Vincent Library

Six Workshops. One Weekend. Countless Lines.

Dates: Friday 28 August – Sunday 30 August 2026

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

Tickets: $30 General / $25 WA Poets Inc. Members per workshop

Spend your Festival weekend immersed in poetic practice.

Across three days, WA Poets Inc presents six focused, generative workshops at Vincent Library. Led by an extraordinary mix of local and national poets and experienced facilitators, these sessions move through collage, memoir, spoken word, performance craft, automatic writing and new ways of meeting the world through poetry.

Whether you want to put a poem on its feet, cut language apart and remake it, transform lived experience into spoken word, quiet the inner critic or find new ways into your own voice, there is room here to experiment.

Workshop Schedule

Workshop 1: Friday 28 August | 9:15 am – 11:15 am
Facilitator: Alex Creece
Hodgepodge Poetry Workshop
Workshop 2: Friday 28 August | 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Facilitator: Allan Boyd & Perth Slam
ARE YOU READY? PERTH SLAM PERFORMANCE POETRY WORKSHOP!
Workshop 3: Saturday 29 August | 9:15 am – 11:15 am
Facilitator: Oormila V. Prahlad
Memory to Voice: Transforming Lived Experience into Spoken Word
Workshop 4: Saturday 29 August | 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Facilitator: Ender Başkan
First Thought Best Thought
Workshop 5: Sunday 30 August | 9:15 am – 11:15 am
Facilitator: Emilie Collyer
Poetry Where We Meet The World
Workshop 6: Sunday 30 August | 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Facilitator: Cyndy Moody
Workshop details coming shortly

You may register for one or multiple workshops. Each session is ticketed separately with general and WA Poets Inc. member pricing. Content and approach vary across facilitators, allowing you to shape your own Festival weekend around the forms, ideas and practices that speak to you.

Workshop Details

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.

Registration Tips

Register early to secure limited seats.
You may book one workshop or build your own weekend across several sessions.
Bring your favourite writing tools.
Workshops are suitable for all levels unless otherwise stated.
Please check individual workshop descriptions for any particular focus or suggested materials.
Participants in Allan Boyd's performance poetry workshop are welcome to bring a short poem to work with.

Accessibility:

Vincent Library is wheelchair accessible. Please contact us if you have specific access requirements and we will assist wherever possible.

Acknowledgement of Country:

We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are operating on, the Whadjuk people and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region. We pay our respects to them and their cultures; and to elders both past and present.

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

Visit perthpoetryfestival.com for the full Festival program and more information.

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

Contact the host of Workshops | Perth Poetry Festival 2026