Evelyn Araluen at the Island Readers & Writers Festival

In Conversation with Evelyn Araluen

When: Sunday 31 May, 1:45 PM - 2:45 PM

Location: Ian Potter Recital Hall, 19 Collins Street, Nipaluna/Hobart

Evelyn Araluen’s Stella Prize-winning collection Dropbearhas become one of Australia’s best-selling and most widely read books of poetry. Provocative, gorgeous and devastating, it held a blowtorch to the feet of colonial Australia. Evelyn’s follow-up, The Rot, is ‘a recalcitrant study of the decaying romances, expired hopes and abject injustices of the world’ and ‘a liturgy for girlhood in the dying days of late-stage capitalism’. Join Evelyn and Neika Lehman as they discuss poetics, rage, Country and life in a settler colony.

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The Great Debate - only literature can save us!

When: Sunday 31 May, 5:15 PM - 6:30 PM

Location: Ian Potter Recital Hall, The Hedberg, 19 Collins Street, Nipaluna/Hobar

AI, climate change, Trump’s America, a housing crisis, free speech battles, genocide, the rise of One Nation, a global paedophile conspiracy, war in the Middle East and Europe rearming itself with nuclear weapons – there’s a lot going on and it’s hard not to feel like everything is getting worse. Politicians, pundits and the media don’t seem to be able to fix it. Lucky we’ve got literature! Two teams of poets and novelists go head-to-head to discover whether the pen really is mightier than the sword, whether imagination can build a better future, or whether writing a book is a waste of time that could be better spent prepping for the apocalypse.

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In Conversation with Evelyn Araluen and Caitlin Maling

When: Monday 1 June, 11:15 AM - 12:15 PM

Location: The Forest, 83 Melville Street, Nipaluna/Hobart

With two Stella Prizes awarded to poetry collections and an Australian Poet Laureate on the horizon, the future looks bright for Australian poetry. Join Evelyn Araluen and Caitlin Maling in conversation with poet and UTAS Classics lecturer Grame Miles as they discuss how poets learn their craft, what poetry community looks like, what’s happening in Australian poetry publishing, and where magazines like Overland fit into the picture.

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Finding Your Voice

When: Monday 1 June, 9:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Location: The Forest, 83 Melville Street, Nipaluna/Hobart

How do poets learn their own voice, and what shapes it? In this immersive workshop, Evelyn Araluen invites attendees to explore the relationship between craft, form and self-expression. Through close reading of a range of poems, participants will explore what (if anything) they love in poetry and why it resonates with audiences. By unpacking their responses, students will gain insight into their own philosophies, histories and identities. Blending a reading and creative practice, this workshop helps emerging writers develop both a deeper appreciation of poetry and a more confident, distinctive voice of their own.

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