The Inaugural Melbourne Spoken Word & Poetry Festival

The inaugural Melbourne Spoken Word & Poetry Festival is hosted by Melbourne Spoken Word and a range of independent and regular poetry and spoken word events around Melbourne, as well as some other partner organisations including Going Down Swinging and Science Gallery.

The program includes a range of free events, events with open sections reflecting the participatory nature of spoken word in Melbourne, and with no event costing over $30.

The festival will include nationally and internationally recognised poets, including Maxine Beneba Clarke performing on opening night, and US internationally touring poet Moody Black headlining closing night. The festival will also include performances from Victorian Poetry Slam Champion, Sharifa Tartoussi, Queensland Poetry Festival’s XYZ Prize for Innovation in spoken word winner, Quinn Eades, plus Green Room Awards nominee, wāni, Andy Jackson, Eleanor Jackson, Tariro Mavondo and India’s Rochelle D’silva.

Events will also be hosted by a range of organisations, including La Mama Theatre, Going Down Swinging, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Mother Tongue, Girls on Key, as well as Slamalamadingdong hosting the 2018 Grand Slam to decide the National Poetry Slam team to travel to the US in August.

Four workshops will be held at Siteworks, in Brunswick, covering a range of topics from producing a performance poetry piece, to physical performance and auto-biographical poetry as well as international headline poet Moody Black hosting a workshop that he has presented in colleges in the US.

Events will be hosted around Melbourne, including at The Toff, Howler in Brunswick, The Melba Spiegeltent, Library at The Dock in Docklands, Afro Hub, LongPlay, Open Studio and Collected Works Bookshop. Siteworks in Brunswick will play host to the workshops, as well as some special events, including The Compliment Death Match.

 Tickets are now on sale for all events and many are expected to sell out.