Events
Zoom Poetry Reading
Cath Kenneally and Kimberly K Williams reading from their new collections, and Open Mic
Thursday 25 JUNE 2026, 7.30-9.00pm AEST
Join in this special Zoom poetry event to hear both great poets read – a must for all of us listening, reading and thinking about the insights that poetry can bring.
And Open Mic poets to hear of course. NOW FULL
The Green Room by Cath Kenneally
This collection of beautiful and energized poems takes stock of where we stand, in planetary terms, as caretakers of the seas and lakes and rivers of the world.
The Green Room began as a set of seven poems commissioned by artist Chris De Rosa who, like Kenneally is a year-round sea swimmer, to accompany her sculptural work, ‘SeaWeeding’ (Museum of Economic Botany, Adelaide 2022). From that experience emerged this themed full-length set of poems about water, immersion, the Blue Planet, the nature of our human fascination with the sea and waterways, the ordinary and the mysterious pull of the sea. The Green Room incorporates matters oceanic, estuarine, littoral and riverine, in poems that plumb the depths, as it were, of our integral human connection with ocean and water.
Book your ticket below
Free general admission, and supporter and patron tickets available
Following the Wagons: A Poetic Trail by Kimberly K Williams
Kimberly Williams’ moving new work, Following the Wagons: A Poetic Trail, is a historically-based hybrid long poem that brings to life the experiences of women who crossed what is now the western United States during the years 1840-1860. As a multi-voiced sequence, combining the empathic imagination of poetry with archival research, the collection represents both stylistically and thematically the often arduous journey that so many women made then – and might still make – as migrants: full of apprehension, hope and constraint, as well as limited understanding of the country through which they are travelling.
Following the Wagons: A Poetic Trail exhorts the reader to inhabit a powerful emotional space: to travel with these women in their extreme vulnerability and to critically observe this quintessential colonial journeying of the ‘pioneer.’
Kimberly K Williams
Kimberly K Williams is a Lecturer at Central Queensland University and an award-winning poet. She often uses history to inform her poems. Her second book, Sometimes a Woman (Recent Work Press 2021), about the madams and prostitutes who helped to settle the U.S. ‘Wild West,’ won the 2022 WILLA Literary Award for Poetry (USA). Her third book, Still Lives (Gazebo Books 2022), won a Canberra Critics Award in 2023 and was short-listed for the ACT Poetry Book of the Year. She is originally from Detroit, Michigan, USA, and emigrated to Australia in 2019.
Cath Kenneally
Cath Kenneally is an award-winning poet, novelist, broadcaster, reviewer and arts writer. The Green Room is her eighth collection of poetry. She lives in Adelaide and spends part of each year in Tasmania. She co-hosts the podcast Tsundoku ‘for addicted readers’.
Zoom Poetry Reading
Susan Bradley Smith and Stephanie Green and ‘Open Mic’ with emerging poets
Thursday 17 SEPTEMBER 2026, 7.30-9.00pm AEST
Come to this Zoom poetry event to hear Susan Bradley Smith and Stephanie Green – two fantastic poets with amazing new collections.
And in the Open Mic bracket we’ll hear from poets who were ’emerging poets’ in prize- winning, highly commended or Emerging Poets categories in our previous Prizes. It will be great to find out what they have been doing and writing.
- Kim Kenyon
- Hannah McCann
- Becky Houston
- Glen Hunting
- Luisa Mitchell
- Belinda Calderone
- Bridget Webster
- Nikki Viveca
Susan Bradley Smith
Susan Bradley Smith is an Australian poet and historian. Born in Bega, and raised in Bundjalung country in northern NSW, she has worked as journalist, teacher, and professor in London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Perth, and Rome, and now lives in Naarm/Melbourne. With seven collections of poetry, opera libretti, memoir, and history, her books include the writing and wellbeing memoir Friday Forever: Memoirs of Madness (Routledge/Taylor & Francis), the poetry collection Gladland (Recent Work Press), and the cultural history A Splendid Adventure: Australian Suffrage Theatre on the World Stage (Peter Lang). Her dream is to be a marine biologist specialising in rock pool life.
Book your ticket below
Free general admission, and supporter and patron tickets available
The Thing I Came For by Susan Bradley Smith
The Thing I Came For is a fictional memoir-in-verse which takes us from wild girlhood to untranquil 21st century womanhood, motherhood and beyond. In 80s Sydney, London and Berlin beneath the wall, Bradley Smith’s prose poems unfold a raw saga of one woman’s often chaotic hunt for freedom, finally laid bare for a beloved daughter.
Sahara Rain by Stephanie Green
A massive storm on the Moroccan edge of the Sahara Desert inspires a poetic meditation on the rippling effects of changing environments. In Sahara Rain the images of ‘weathering’ also extend to survival in war and impact on interpersonal relationships, taking readers through experiences of shock and loss to possibilities of joy and connection.
Stephanie Green
Stephanie Green is an Australian poet, essayist, biographer, and short story writer, widely published in leading Australian and international journals. Her books include a volume of prose poems, Breathing in Stormy Seasons (Recent Work Press, 2019) and a selection of short stories, Too Much too Soon (Pandanus 2006). Her poetry collection, Seams of Repair (Calanthe Press, 2023), has been praised for its lyrical precision and its meditative explorations of memory, history, and belonging. In addition to her creative work, Stephanie has led a distinguished academic career. She is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer with Griffith University, contributing to the fields of creative writing, literature, and cultural studies.