Sonic Poetry Festival is a community-based grassroots poetry and spoken word festival based in Melbourne / Narrm.

Our aim is to connect poetry and spoken word practitioners of all varieties: audience members, gig organisers, convenors and facilitators in a celebration of poetry and the spoken word. We would like to create entrances for people interested in experiencing poetry, those who need poetry in their lives and don’t know it, artists, gigs and the poets out there quietly writing and performing. We also wish to serve and uplift underrepresented micro-communities.

SONIC POETRY FESTIVAL 2026

Sonic Poetry Festival 2026 is an invitation to play!

This year, the festival proposes the creation of three distinct centres

1. A textual and sonic play-ground that allows us to be generative, thoughtful and even capricious together in a safe space

2. A civic laboratory where participants consider our roles as artist or audience or something both and in between — in the room and beyond

3. A warm gathering space where we can share poetry, spoken word, presence and our individual and collective humanness.

The festival will be held over the weekend of 24th October at Balam Balam place (a fantastic new purpose-built creative and community precinct in Brunswick).

We are still working on our programming and will announce events as we firm them up!

Contact the host of Sonic Poetry Festival 2026