From falling in love to funerals, poetry accompanies us through life at every step of the way. We may not always try our hand at the artform ourselves – though more power to those who do, especially the writers published by the likes of Black Pepper, Five Islands, Giramondo, UWAP and other local champions of the artform – but the power of a poem to stir the blood or move an audience to tears is unabated since the days of Homer – and earlier.
In Australia, August is Poetry Month thanks to The Rocks-based organisation Red Room Poetry and its many partners.
Now in its sixth year, the initiative fills August with live and online events and workshops, writing prompts and commissioned poems, a national gala, and this year the addition of a special screening of the film Dead Poets Society with its director, Peter Weir, at the Sydney Opera House.
Poetry Month 2026 – quick links
Highlights of Poetry Month 2026
‘This is the sixth Poetry Month produced by Red Room, and during that time it has established itself as a key national platform that amplifies and celebrates poetry in all of its forms. It also means more poetry in bookshops and being broadcast, more poets commissioned and paid to feature at festivals and events, and each year results in new readers and audiences both here and beyond these shores,’ says David Stavanger, Red Room Poetry Artistic Director.
‘This year’s Poetry Month is full of so many ways to engage and participate in this form we love, whether at an in-person event or from your own home – and to offer lines from a range of voices to better make sense of the times we are in,’ he adds.
In a milestone year for poetry – Australia’s inaugural National Poet Laureate will be announced in October – the 2026 Poetry Month program brings together a diverse range of Australian artists, musicians, comedians and journalists alongside international poets Jericho Brown (US), Tusiata Avia (Aotearoa New Zealand), Michael Pederson (Scotland) and Pádraig Ó Tuama (Ireland).
ArtsHub: Industry responses to Australia’s Poet Laureate position
Program highlights include a dedicated Phone-a-Poem line installed across eight locations; the #30in30 Writing Competition with daily book giveaways; pop-up poet performances in partnership with The Wheeler Centre; poets in residence program at Varuna, The National Writers’ House; and Poetry Month X events happening in Darwin, Cairns and Adelaide.
Elsewhere in the program, the National Poetry Month Gala returns to the State Library of NSW on 27 August, with host Jan Fran and a line-up of contemporary Australian poets, wordsmiths and spoken word artists performing their work, including Evelyn Araluen, Dakota Feirer, Tenzin Choegyal and Zoe Terakes.
Middle of the Air, the lyric writing competition in partnership with ABC Radio National, returns in 2026, with entries open from 1 August. Middle of the Air celebrates poetry beyond the page, uniting poem and song in new ways while drawing on the rich history between these parallel artforms.
The 30in30 daily poems will feature work from Stella Prize-nominated author Debra Dank, award-winning poets Judith Beveridge, Alan Fyfe and Evelyn Araluen, and multi-disciplinary co-commissioned works from collective Snack Syndicate (Astrid Lorange and Andrew Brooks), poetry and music project Lotus Threads (poet Panda Wong and musician Hannah Wu), and Hannah Jenkins and Rory Green, the co-editors of Crawlspace, the journal for artistic and poetic applications of technology.
Poetry Month 2026 ambassadors and commissioned poets
This year’s Poetry Month ambassadors include journalist Jan Fran, singer-songwriter and musician Missy Higgins, comedian Sez, broadcaster Rudi Bremer, sports journalist Bharat Sundaresan and singer and author Ziggy Ramo.
The 2026 Youth Poetry Ambassadors are Gunditjmara poet, musician and creative Isabella Eichler-Onus; poet and winner of the 2025 Bankstown Poetry Grand Slam, Jihad Yassine; the current Australian Poetry Slam Champion, Arantza Garcia; and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and co-founder of Hyades Magazine, Janiru Liyanage.
Australian poets commissioned through Poetry Month 2026’s 30in30 program this year are Evelyn Araluen, Judith Beveridge, Debra Dank, Alan Fyfe, Troy Wong, Keri Glastonbury, Panda Wong, Dakota Feirer, Liam Ferney, Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange, and Jacqui Malins.
Two of the poets commissioned for 30in30 shared their feelings about the significance and importance of poetry with ArtsHub.
‘Poetry is a reclamation of the voice. It is an assertion of the self and it is self-definition through defamiliarisation,’ says Troy Wong.
Kristen Lang adds: ‘The world is larger than our words. We need poetry for the chance it can return us to or nudge us into the vicinity of that which language cannot hold.’
Workshops and live events
Poetry Month workshops are run primarily online, though some face-to-face events are also programmed. Online workshops this year include:
- 29 July: Dis-Poetics Accessible Poetry workshop with Robin Eames
- 5 August: Duplex with Jericho Brown (US)
- 12 August: Animals of Love with Michael Pedersen (SCT)
- 19 August: Persona with Pádraig Ó Tuama (IRL)
- 26 August: Elegy with Tusiata Avia (NZ)
Co-curated live events in partnership with libraries, festivals and other organisations take place across cities and regional hubs as part of Poetry Month. Selected highlights include:
- 1-31 August: Middle of the Air in partnership with ABC Radio National
- 3 August: Poetry’s Next Big Thing with The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne
- 6 August: Blak Ink: First Nations Showcase at Fremantle Library
- 12 August: Maxine Beneba Clarke performance and interview at Geelong Library
- 14 August: Maxine Beneba Clarke performance and interview at Bendigo Library
- 14-16 August: Byron Writers Festival Showcase and pop-up poets in Byron Bay
- 21 August: Arts Talk by Ellen van Neerven and Jacqui Malins in response to the New Australian Work exhibition in Canberra
- 21-23 August: NT vs SA Showcase in partnership with Red Dirt
- 27 August: Poetry Month Gala hosted by Jan Fran live in Sydney and live-streamed from SLNSW
- 30 August: Red Room Poetry Fellows Showcase at Varuna in Katoomba
- 1-31 August: Soapbox Billboards public installation in City of Hobart
- 5 September: Dead Poets Society screening with introduction by Peter Weir at Sydney Opera House
