Toolkits: Poetry
A mentoring partnership between Express Media and Australian PoetryAustralian Poetry and Express Media present Toolkits: Poetry 2026.
Toolkits is a series of annual 12-week online programs for writers under 30 around the continent. Explore and expand your poetic craft alongside your peers, guided for a second year by the wonderful Lou Garcia-Dolnik.
Sessions will run on Wednesday evenings beginning on 14 October. Applications close 27 September, 11:59pm AEST. Find out more on the Express Media website.
About Lou Garcia-Dolnik
Lou Garcia-Dolnik is a poet living and working on sovereign Gadigal-Wangal lands. Their work has been awarded Second Prize in Overland’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize, a place on the shortlist for the Blake Prize, Val Vallis Awards, LIMINAL Non-Fiction Prize, the Kat Muscat Fellowship, and an Academy of American Poets University Prize from the University of Texas at Austin. An alumnus of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Emerging Writers Intensive, Lou was the 2023 recipient of the Australian Poetry/NAHR Eco-Poetry Fellowship and attended Tin House’s Summer Workshop in the poetry faculty. They are a 2026 Wheeler Centre Next Chapter Fellow.
Lou says: “Hey poets! Together, we’ll be building a toolbox of theory, creative stimulus and writing to vibe with in service of creating a poetic practice that feels genuinely nourishing (all for free!). This is a space for your weird, specific and obsessional writing – chuck an app in!”
