To Be or Not to Be? The poet laureate debate

2026 will see Australia establish its first poet laureate. Will it change the game for Australia's poets?

Tim Loveday moderates this spicy battle of wits and words with leading poets Izzy Roberts-Orr, Barry James Gilson and Eartha Davis.

Tim Loveday is a poet and academic. He won the 2022 & 2024 Dorothy Porter Poetry Awards and the 2023 Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Award, and was a finalist in the 2023 David Harold Tribe Poetry Prize, 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize and the 2025 Dorothy Hewett Unpublished Manuscript Award.

Izzy Roberts-Orr is a poet and arts worker based on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country in Barrys Reef. Her debut collection Raw Salt won the 2024 Anne Elder Award. She is a 2026 BR Whiting Residency (Rome) recipient for Medusa is a Modern Woman, and Creative Producer at Red Room Poetry.

Barry James Gilson is a Wadawurrung man, singer / songwriter, award-winning poet and storyteller - he has lived in the countryside of Gordon all his life, with a view of Kirritt Barreet, the mountain where Bunjil the Eagle created the first two men. He tells stories of Dreamtime ancestral heroes and the nature around us all. Collecting stories never heard before and interpreting them for the audience - an important understanding and coming together for everyone listening. He had written the second part for the show 'AURA' at sovereign hill. Every year he opens up Meredith Music Festival and Golden Plains, and does storytelling events at both of these.

Eartha Davis is a woman of Ngāpuhi and Celtic heritage living on Wurundjeri land. She is the winner of the AAWP/Express Media Sudden Writing Prize and a 2025 Varuna Residency Fellow. She writes about hope, ancestors, returning to the rivers of our hearts to dream.

The Words in Winter conversation series is generously supported by the Community Bank Daylesford District.