Melbourne Visiting Poets Program

The Melbourne Visiting Poets Program welcomes two poets-in-residence per year to RMIT’s City Campus: a First Nations poet by invitation; and a regional poet selected from a national, open call-out. Funded by the Australia Council for the Arts, the program is coordinated out of the non/fictionLab, in partnership with Australian Poetry, Melbourne Spoken Word and Rabbit: A Journal for Nonfiction Poetry.

The program is committed to making opportunities for diverse poets and poetics to utilise the resources of the institution as a platform for urban networking, creative development, and performance. Previous guests of the program include Amanda Stewart, Natalie Harkin, Stuart Cooke, Lionel Fogarty, Ellen van Neerven, Andy Jackson, David Stavanger and Alison Whittaker. It connects poets with metropolitan audiences and provides time and space for developing new work.

Please contact Bonny Cassidy at bonny.cassidy@rmit.edu.au with any queries.

The Melbourne Visiting Poets Program is proud to announce the selection of its 2019 regional resident, Mindy Gill, who has been selected from Australian poets based outside of capital cities.

Applicants for the regional round represented emerging, mid-career and senior talents. The applications were assessed by representatives of the program’s partners: non/fictionLab, Rabbit Poetry, Australian Poetry and Melbourne Spoken Word. The program thanks all applicants to this round.

Mindy joins the program’s past residents including Lionel Fogarty, Amanda Stewart, Natalie Harkin, Stuart Cooke, Andy Jackson, Ellen Van Neerven, David Stavanger and Alison Whittaker.

In August, Mindy’s residency will be followed by the program’s invited resident for 2019, Ali Cobby Eckermann.

Mindy Gill’s poems have appeared in Island Magazine, The Lifted Brow, Award Winning Australian Writing and the Queensland Art Gallery. She is the recipient of the Queensland Premier’s Writers and Publishers Award, a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship and the Tom Collins Poetry Prize. She is Peril Magazine‘s Editor-in-Chief.

Mindy will be visiting Melbourne from the Gold Coast. She will be working with the program to deliver a series of public activities in early May. Details of events will be promoted through the program partners.

The Melbourne Visiting Poets Program acknowledges the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the Eastern Kulin Nations as the traditional owners of the land on which much of this program takes place. It respectfully recognises Elders both past and present.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. It is also made possible by in-kind support from its partners.