SA

The city of Adelaide is blooming with creative opportunities for established, emerging, spoken word, performance and page-based poets. The city holds an annual Adelaide Writers’ Week, which showcases an event called Poetry Reading, supporting upcoming and experienced poets producing exciting and extraordinary work. Other festivals include The Spring Poetry Festival, run by South Australian English Teachers. The festival is open to all teachers and students in Australian schools and aims to support local poets, old and young with prizes and a publication of the best poems from the festival.

The South Australian Writers’ Centre is the place to convene for workshops, festival updates, resources, different services such as manuscript assessment, professional development. They run summer courses, community programs and support various writing groups. To find out more about them and the fantastic work that they do, the services they offer and how you can get involved, visit their website.

Friendly Street Poets Collective (FSP) is the go-to place for regular events, updates and news. They run readings in the city on the first Tuesday of every month. They run an annual anthology as well as the Satura Poetry Prize. The Satura Award celebrates the late John Bray who was a tour de force for the first twenty years of Friendly Street.

A variety of Australian Poetry Slam events can also be found in central Adelaide as well as regional locations across South Australia. Details for Australian Poetry Slam events can be found here. 

Outside of Adelaide, Macclesfield has a vibrant poetry scene. The Maccy Shy Poets convened in Macclesfield in early 2011 and have since presented poetry performances at Fringe and SALA events in 2011, 2012 & 2013. Their most recent project was the Bert Davis Spoken Word Festival & Awards in April 2015. Strong & Bold Publishing supports Australian poetry and history in South Australia, where you can find further details in relation to Maccy Shy Poets, Strong & Bold Publishing, local events and readings. Verse vs Verse and Speak Easy are also run in Macclesfield, showing the vibrancy, interest and initiative in this regional community.Upcoming events specific to months of the year can be found at Etropy Events. A major focus of Entropy Events is celebrating Macclesfield writers through spoken-word events.

If you believe we’ve missed something important in your state, feel free to let us know at communications@australianpoetry.org.