The Perth Poetry Festival 2026 Gala at Perth Town Hall on Thursday 27 August was an evening for poetry to be spoken, sung, remembered, challenged and shared. Under this year’s theme, Ear to the Ground, poets, musicians, storytellers and an attentive audience came together for a night that moved across Country, culture, language, grief, migration, belonging, environmental loss, history, humour and hope.
From the very beginning, there was a sense that this would be exceptionally great. The magnificent Town Hall became a place for listening, really listening. The audience laughed, cheered, fell silent when the words demanded it and responded with the kind of warmth that allows artists to take risks. There was respect in the room but also joy, curiosity and a genuine appetite for words.
The evening began with Dylan Collard, a proud Wadjak and Balardong Noongar man and founder of Kalyakoorl, whose work is dedicated to ensuring Noongar language continues into the future. Collard’s journey into language teaching grew from his work with young people, and he now teaches Noongar language across schools, communities and organisations. His Welcome to Country, alongside Emeritus Professor Simon Forrest, grounded the Gala firmly in Noongar Boodjar. Collard spoke about the ancient Noongar practices of welcoming visitors and caring for Country, while acknowledging that this generosity has not always been reciprocated. He spoke about the continuing importance of ceremony, language and poetry, and the deep relationship between language and land. He welcomed people from different backgrounds and countries while reminding us that Noongar people continue to care for Country and carry their cultural practices forward. It was a welcome that felt generous, honest and deeply connected to place, setting the tone for an evening in which every voice seemed to ask us to pay closer attention.
Festival Patron Cyndy Moody, a proud Yued, Ballardong and Whadjuk Noongar woman, singer-songwriter, musician, artist and language facilitator, continued that conversation with a message that became one of the evening’s most important ideas. As founder of DjoonyArt Creatives, Moody has worked across Perth libraries and community spaces sharing Noongar stories, language, music and lullabies, and her song Ngany Koorlangka (My Kid) won the 2021 WAM Country Song of the Year. But on this night, her focus was listening. She spoke about how people can become very good at talking without becoming very good at truly hearing. She encouraged the audience to slow down, put aside assumptions and be willing to say, “I don’t know. Tell me. I’m listening.” From her perspective as a Noongar woman, listening is closely connected to Country, culture and storytelling. Some stories cannot be rushed. Some require time, the right place and respect. Her message was simple but powerful: genuine connection does not always begin with having something to say. Sometimes it begins with being quiet enough to hear.
Then came the Empty Chair, a powerful reminder that listening also means remembering those who have been prevented from speaking. Through the Festival’s collaboration with PEN Perth, an empty chair is held for a writer who cannot take their place among us because they are imprisoned, persecuted or otherwise silenced. At the Gala, the chair represented Iranian Baha’i poet and teacher Mahvash Sabet, who has faced imprisonment and persecution and began writing poetry during an earlier decade-long imprisonment. The chair was deliberately vacant, making her absence impossible to overlook. In a room celebrating the freedom of words, it became a quiet reminder that writers elsewhere can be punished simply for using theirs.
Miranda Aitken, a poet and musician living on Wadandi Country, then brought poetry and music together in a deeply moving performance of two works from her new project, Sky River and My Body Is a Swamp, accompanied by Monty Sforcina on kemenche and flute. Aitken’s work explores human fragility, our relationship with nature and the importance of protecting wild places, while her work through The Marritree in Witchcliffe brings poetry, music, books, art and community together. On the Gala stage, the poetry and music seemed to feel together. The sounds of the kemenche and flute created an immersive atmosphere around words that explored the body, landscape and the natural world. I found the performance especially beautiful because the music did not merely accompany the poetry; it helped make the emotional world of the poems feel alive.
Coral Carter brought the audience into the intimate and difficult territory of grief with four poems from her work Good Grief: These Things Happened, Building the Coffin, I Wasn’t There and Ordinary Things I Want to Tell Her. Carter has published three books with Mulla Mulla Press, with Good Grief her latest, and her writing has received recognition in competitions focused on poetry and grief. Her performance explored loss, memory, absence and the strange persistence of ordinary life after someone is gone. Building the Coffin confronted the physical reality of death, while I Wasn’t There suggested absence, regret and the things we wish we had witnessed. These Things Happened looked towards memory, while Ordinary Things I Want to Tell Her captured those everyday thoughts that continue after a loved one has died, the small things you still want to share. Carter’s performance was deeply emotional because she transformed personal grief into something intimate and recognisable, reminding us that grief is not only about the moment of loss but about everything that continues afterwards.
Patrick McCarthy offered laughter, surprise and tenderness to the stage. He began performing poetry publicly in 2020, initially for the fun of making people laugh, but soon discovered how much he enjoyed using words to make audiences laugh and cry. He went on to perform widely and established his own monthly poetry show at Clancy’s Fremantle, Once Upon a Time in Fremantle. His Gala performance showed exactly why that combination of humour and feeling works so well. His first piece, built around an encounter with a Willie Wagtail, became a playful but thoughtful reflection on Australia, belonging, displacement and respect for Country and its First Peoples, ending with a wonderfully unexpected comic moment. He then shifted into the tenderness of A Lovely Old Man, imagining the life his best friend might have lived and the older man he might have become had he not died so young. One moment the audience was laughing; the next, the room was still. McCarthy showed how poetry can hold both comedy and heartbreak without either diminishing the other.
Emilie Collyer gave a powerful and striking performance that moved effortlessly between humour, observation, vulnerability and social commentary. Her poetry captured the textures of everyday urban life, public transport, ageing, relationships and the small encounters that reveal something larger about society. Her second piece was especially raw and courageous, drawing on her experience of chemotherapy, running and the fear of illness and death, while also confronting the violence and harassment women can face in public spaces. With sharp imagery, wit and an unflinching honesty, Emilie transformed personal experience into poetry that was both deeply intimate and socially resonant. Her delivery was compelling, intelligent and memorable, leaving the audience with both laughter and a profound sense of reflection.
Luisa Mitchell, a Whadjuk Nyungar poet, screenwriter and arts worker from Rubibi-Broome now living on her ancestral Country in Boorloo-Perth, brought a bold and evocative energy to the stage. Her work is grounded in storytelling as a practice of healing, connection and regeneration, and her performance moved between dreamlike imagery and sharp social observation. Her opening poem created a haunting landscape of deserts, rivers, migration and memory, filled with cracked earth, distant oceans and fragile traces of what remains. She then shifted dramatically into the energetic and irreverent Good Morning Perth, taking aim at trains, commuters, developers, disappearing wetlands, homelessness, feminism and environmental loss. With humour, anger and vivid local detail, Mitchell questioned what progress really means and whose voices are heard or ignored as the city changes. She made Perth feel familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, a place we know but perhaps have not been looking at closely enough.
Shadow Walk Poet Troupe (Deanne Leber, Natascha Balak and Nidal Saeed) delivered one of the evening’s most haunting performances, blending their individual voices into a collective meditation on place, memory, displacement, colonisation and fractured humanity. Their poetry moved through childhood memories, landscape and the rapidly changing city of Perth before opening into sharp reflections on migration, belonging, racism and environmental destruction. Familiar streets and buildings seemed to carry histories beneath their surfaces. The performance became increasingly intense before reaching an anguished examination of war, violence, loss and the suffering of innocent lives. Together, the three poets created a theatrical experience in which poetry became both personal testimony and social witness. Their contrasting voices and emotional intensity made the performance deeply affecting and left the audience with the feeling that the city itself had been speaking through them.
Alex Creece, a writer, editor and collage artist living on Wadawurrung land, brought an experimental and highly imaginative performance that took the colour green and made it into an entire world. As Managing Editor of Cordite Poetry Review and Online Editor of Archer Magazine, Creece is deeply involved in contemporary Australian writing, and her performance reflected that restless, unconventional spirit. Green became nature, illness, consumerism, ecological destruction, grief and contradiction. Surreal images, pop culture references, dark humour and sharp wordplay collided at an almost feverish pace, reflecting a world overwhelmed by pollution, war, media and ecological anxiety. Yet beneath the irreverence was tenderness, particularly in the memory of a beloved dead dog. Creece made something as ordinary as a patch of grass feel enormous, turning it into a question about climate, mortality, responsibility and what it means to care for the world around us.
Oormila V. Prahlad gave a deeply moving and contemplative performance, bringing together themes of war, displacement, memory, grief and the healing power of art. An internationally published, multi-award-winning Indian Australian poet and artist who was raised in the Middle East, Prahlad writes for both page and stage, with her next full-length collection forthcoming with 5 Islands Press. Her opening poem became a meditation on the moral tension of creating beauty in a world marked by violence, where the pen and brush become both witness and armour. The Piano Tuner, drawn from lived experience, was particularly poignant, connecting two strangers through memories of war, migration and loss, with the piano becoming a beautiful symbol of survival and shared humanity. Her final poem returned to a transformed childhood landscape and an old river. Prahlad’s gentle delivery gave her poetry an intimate emotional depth, reminding us that art can preserve memory, bridge differences and create a fragile but enduring connection to home.
Ender Başkan, a poet, novelist, small-press publisher and bookseller, brought the audience into the extraordinary world of ordinary neighbours. His debut collection Two Hundred Million Musketeers won the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for several major literary prizes. His Gala performance centred on the everyday encounters through which communities are quietly made: sharing food and tools, looking after children and plants, helping one another through illness and loss, celebrating together and occasionally disagreeing. Turkish, Lebanese, Greek, Macedonian and Australian lives intersected in his vivid portrait of neighbourhood life. Beneath the humour was a powerful reflection on home, friendship, migration, changing neighbourhoods and the threat of development. Başkan reminded us that a neighbourhood is not simply a collection of houses, but a living network of people who become one another’s community through countless small acts of generosity and trust.
Reneé Pettitt-Schipp brought poetry and music together in another memorable performance. Her work with asylum seekers on Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands inspired her first collection, The Sky Runs Right Through Us, which was shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett manuscript prize and CHASS Australia prize and won the WA Premier’s Literary Award for an Emerging Writer in 2019. Her nonfiction work The Archipelago of Us was later published by Fremantle Press, continuing her engagement with the stories and realities of Australia’s Indian Ocean Territories. Pettitt-Schipp has also explored the meeting point between poetry and music through collaborations with musicians. At the Gala, she performed with Ashley Schipp, a guitarist and vocalist, and the result was wonderfully woven together. The spoken poetry, singing and guitar flowed into one another, creating a performance that felt intimate, musical and alive. Rather than separating poetry from song, she allowed the two to become part of the same storytelling experience. It was a beautiful reminder that poetry can be heard in many forms — spoken, sung and carried through music.
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes closed the poetry performances with a powerful and historically charged work centred on Ethiopia’s resistance to colonialism and the Battle of Adwa. An award-winning poet and author from the holy town of Lalibela in Ethiopia, Woldeyes’s Amharic poetry has been published and performed widely, while his book Trials of Hope won the 2024 Hungerford Award. He is also a human rights activist and Associate Professor at Curtin University. His use of both Amharic and English brought a particular strength to the performance, while his imagery of mountains, land, farmers, workers, warriors and the colours of the Ethiopian flag created a stirring sense of cultural memory and pride. Adwa became more than a historical event; it became a symbol of African dignity, resistance and collective strength. Delivered with conviction and emotional force, Woldeyes’s poetry became both remembrance and resistance, celebrating a history that refuses to be forgotten.
Holding the evening together were emcees Lakshmi Kanchi and Manveen Kohli, whose own lives as poets and performers gave them a natural understanding of the artists they introduced. Kanchi, who writes under the name SoulReserve, is a Western Australian poet whose work explores language, culture, history, nature and perception, and whose debut collection Lakesong was published through Centre for Stories. Kohli is a British Indian poet, performer, psychologist, teacher and author whose work explores identity, culture, gender and the experience of living between worlds. She has also been a WA finalist in the Australian Poetry Slam. Their chemistry on stage helped the evening move effortlessly from one voice to another. They were warm without becoming intrusive, engaging without taking attention away from the performers, and clearly understood that good hosting is often about knowing when to step forward and when to let the poet have the room.
And then there was the audience.
They were attentive, generous and wonderfully alive to the performances. They laughed freely, cheered loudly, listened carefully and responded with genuine respect. Difficult poems were met with silence; joyful moments with applause; powerful performances with cheers that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than politeness. There was a sense of shared appreciation in the room — an understanding that the artists were not simply entertaining an audience but inviting them into their worlds.
By the end of the Gala, Ear to the Ground felt like something everyone had experienced.
Listen to Country. Listen to language. Listen to history. Listen to grief. Listen to the natural world. Listen to migrants, neighbours and strangers. Listen to the stories beneath the city. Listen to the voices that are sometimes pushed to the edges.
The Perth Poetry Festival Gala showed that poetry can be funny and furious, musical and political, intimate and enormous. It can speak about a Willie Wagtail, a coffin, a wetland, a piano, a neighbourhood or a war. It can carry the memory of a friend, the history of a nation, the pain of displacement or the beauty of Country. It can make us laugh, make us uncomfortable, make us grieve and, sometimes, make us see the familiar world differently.
Most of all, it can make us pay attention.
As the final applause faded inside Perth Town Hall and the audience began to leave, the world outside had not become any quieter.
Perhaps we had simply learned to hear more.
