Events
coming up
Thurs 23 October, 6.00-8.00pm
PEN and Liquid Amber
Speaking for Others: Women’s Poetry as AdvocacyThurs 27 November, 7.30-9.30pm,
Zoom launch of Poetry of Flight
In person event
Speaking for Others: Women’s Poetry as Advocacy
Thursday 23 October, 6.00 – 8.00 pm AEDT
PEN Melbourne and Liquid Amber Press host an evening of poetry as a powerful way to tell the difficult stories of others who cannot speak for themselves.
Featured poets Angela Costi (author of The Heart of the Advocate) and EA Gleeson (author of The Deepest Thing) will read from their latest works and discuss what it means to speak for those who cannot. In a moving tribute, Susan Esmaili will read poems by imprisoned Iranian poet Mahvesh Sabet in Farsi and English, honouring her courage and resistance.
The evening will be facilitated by poet and editor Rose Lucas, who will guide a panel discussion and audience Q&A around the role of poetry in creating change.
Listen to wonderful poetry and join in the conversation.
Light refreshments provided.
The venue
Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre
251 Faraday St, Carlton VIC 3053
Tickets
$10 or Pay as you wish
‘…fierce, compassionate, and principled. In these poems, Costi scrutinises childhood memories and legal history, revealing the rift between law and justice. These poems are alive with detail, and intimate, but also alert to intersecting kinds of violence: sexist, racist, class-based, legalistic and bureaucratic. This is an exemplar of poetic advocacy.’
Lisa Gorton
Reading EA Gleeson’s poetry, I felt the same awe as when listening to parents talk about their children with disability: the protectiveness, the learnings, the frustrations and the love. I can’t recommend this book enough. These are authentic, hard-hitting, beautiful poems, written for a sister and family, but also for a community in which diversity is embraced, fully.
Jennifer Harrison
Zoom Poetry Reading
Poetry of Flight launch and poet readers
Thursday 27 NOVEMBER 2025, 7.30-9.00pm AEDT
Let’s celebrate. Hear the winners and poets with poems in the Longlist from the 2025 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize.
All these poems will be in the anthology Poetry of Flight, to be launched at the event by Rae White, the energy and driving force behind Uplift Poetry.
The judges of this year’s Prize say “these poems take inspired flight in multiple directions. They fearlessly explore various forms of darkness and inequity to be escaped from as well as what lifts the heart into ecstasy and hope. Once again, the language of poetry shows itself to be a powerful means of expressing the deepest – and the most soaring – elements of human experience”.
Come along to enjoy what promises to be a great launch, and performance of wonderful new poetry.
Book your ticket below
Free general admission, and supporter and patron tickets available
Rae White
Rae White is a non-binary transgender writer, educator and zine maker. Their poetry collection Milk Teeth (UQP, 2018) won the 2017 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize, was shortlisted for the 2019 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the 2018 Anne Elder Award.
Rae’s second poetry collection Exactly As I Am (UQP, 2022) was shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards and the 2023 Judith Wright Calanthe Award in the Queensland Literary Awards.
Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of community poetry initiative Uplift Poetry, and the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives.