**Perth Poetry Festival 2025**
The Perth Poetry Festival returns in 2025 with a vibrant lineup of performances, workshops, and community events celebrating the power of poetry.
📅 Stay up to date with the latest program, venues, and ticket info by visiting the official festival website:
perthpoetryfestival.com
Ros Spencer Poetry Prize 2025
Submission Deadline Extended! – Now 9th July 2025
Established in honour of the late Western Australian poetry patron Ros Spencer, this annual competition continues her legacy of nurturing and celebrating poetic talent. The 2025 Ros Spencer Poetry Prize invites submissions of up to four original, unpublished poems of up to 60 lines on any theme, in any style. Open to emerging and established voices, offering the chance to be recognised, awarded, and published in our annual Brushstrokes anthology. Entries are judged anonymously, with cash prizes awarded for First and Second Place, along with Highly Commended and Commended selections.
Submissions for the 2025 prize close midnight, Wednesday 9 July 2025.
Poetry d’Amour 2025
Presented by WA Poets Inc., Poetry d’Amour is our annual celebration of love in all its forms. We invite submissions of original, unpublished poems of up to 40 lines exploring the theme of love, interpreted broadly and creatively.
Now in its 12th year, Poetry d’Amour culminates in a special event featuring selected poets and the launch of the Poetry d’Amour 2025 anthology. Each year, we showcase the emotional power of poetry and bring lovers of language together in a shared celebration.
The deadline has been extended to midnight (Perth, Western Australia) on
Sunday, 8 June 2025.
Click to know more!
Want more poetry? Browse our complete collection!
What’s New @ WAPI?
- Latest Publications
For a full list of published works by WA Poets Publishing click here
To purchase the latest publications click on the following links:
For Moviegoers; New and Selected Poems by Nicholas Hasluck
For Moviegoers: New and Selected Poems by Nicholas Hasluck shows the way in which poetry, like enthralling movies, can open up memorable layers of thought and feeling, and other versions of reality. A prize-winning writer, the author of 14 novels and 3 previous works of poetry, this new book is a gem.
Why She Gave Me the Painting by Carolyn Abbs
‘Moving between Australia and her English birthplace, the poems offer an apparently effortless authenticity of voice and an admirable attentiveness to others, including strangers, birds and insects, and considerateness towards them.’
Emeritus Professor Dennis Haskell, AM
Filling the Emptiness by Andrew Lansdown
‘There is considerable satisfaction in working with a nascent idea or sentiment or image, and in the process discovering associated ones, so that a poem started as one thing becomes incredibly something other, something stronger and better, …’
Andrew Lansdown
‘These poems, much like the widening gyre of Yeats’ The Second Coming, spiral outward from personal experience to touch upon universal truths …’
Lakshmi Kanchi, Contest Judge
‘The world is messed up, people are messed up, but love is still there, in our imperfect lives, in memories, in wounds.’
Shey Marque, Contest Judge
Minimalist: a field guide of mutability and loss by John Kinsella
‘Writing poetry, for me, is an acknowledgement of purpose—the reification of a belief that commitment and action can bring positive change.’
John Kinsella
Who Would Know? by Dennis Haskell
‘I want to write, and read, poems of emotional and intellectual power that mostly eschew rhetoric, avoid any sort of gimmickry while making a rich use of the English language, and seem to have demanded to be written.’
Dennis Haskell - 2024 Winners
Congratulations to the winners of the following:
- WA Poets Publishing
WA Poets Publishing (WAPP) was formed in 2020 and is the formalised extension of the publishing that was originally conducted under WA Poets Inc. It has arisen partly from the scale back of publishing opportunities for poets in Western Australia and operates as a sub-group of WA Poets Inc. WAPP publishes emerging to eminent Western Australian poets in high quality, short-run publications whilst the anthologies, Creatrix, Poetry d’Amour, and Brushstrokes also include national and international contributing poets.
To view our catalogue click here
- All Abilities online poetry workshop
11-1pm the last Sunday of the month
All Abilities is a monthly online poetry workshop hosted by Karen Lowry for those for who identify as having a disability and/or have access requirements that limit participation to in-person WA Poets Inc events. For details click here
- Brushstrokes IV
What a collection! These poems will hopefully entrance, move, terrify, mystify, amuse, and leave readers wondering at the huge range of experience and wisdom encapsulated in their condensed images and succinct phrases.
Colin Young. 2023 Contest Judge
To purchase a copy, click here
- ‘A Gentle Outward Breath’ by Fran Graham
These poems have been written over a ten-year period since the publication of my first book in 2011. They deal mainly with love: for my children and grandchildren, for travel, for art, for nature, and for the many people with whom I’ve fallen in love over a lifetime.
The poems also explore the many poetic forms I’ve discovered along the way and couldn’t wait to try out.
Fran Graham
To purchase a copy click here
- ‘Permission to Roam’ by Laurie Smith
‘Combining a zoologist’s keen eye and scientific training with a poet’s flair for vivid imagery, Laurie Smith both informs and delights in this collection with his laconic style and dry wit. A lifetime of experiences has been sifted and filtered into very fine and memorable poems. There are portraits, reflections and many “mini” narratives to add variety to the lyric moments of this much-awaited volume.’
Shane McCauley
To purchase a copy click here