Writer's Block Begone! A workshop on prolific idea generation for poets of all levels

Part of Sonic Poetry Festival 2023: Poetry that sounds like all of us

What if every time you wanted to write poetry, you simply could? Leave the fear of a blank page in the past and forget the words "I don't have any ideas right now".

In this workshop with Josh Cake, poets of all levels will unlock a toolbox of techniques to rapidly generate ideas, break writer's block, and filter the results. We'll play with connecting separate ideas into the same poem, and delve into the joys of writing in response to other artworks (ekphrastic poetry). We'll share our work and have fun with words.

Everyone will leave with new poems, new poem drafts to finish later, and the tools they need to never have writer's block ever again.

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Josh Cake has won the National Poetry Slam (Australia), the Best Multilingual Performer award from Arts de Paris, the Best Multidisciplinary Artist from the Whitlam Awards, and the Peseroff Poetry Prize from the University of Massachusetts. Josh has featured at Open Secret (Paris), Un Tubo (Siena), and the P Word Sessions (Melbourne), and has published poems in Cordite, Breakwater Review, Teesta Review, and Messages from the Embers.

Josh makes poetry, music, and comedy for contexts ranging from Canadian spoken word to Icelandic cabaret, from US video games to Chinese university workshops, from TEDx to the ABC, from the Poetry Brothel Paris to the National Gallery of Victoria. Josh teaches writing and performance workshops as well as one-on-one coaching. In 2023, Josh is taking a spoken word collection called 'words to regret when I’m better at editing' on a final Australian east coast circuit before commencing a year long world tour in November.