Events
coming up
Thurs 22 October 2026, 7.30-9.00pm AEDT, Zoom
- Featuring Lyn McCredden, B.R. Dionysius + Open Mic
Sat 24 October 2026, 4.00pm AEDT, In person, Barton ArtBox Canberra
- Two launches – ‘Sahara Rain’ and ‘Following the Wagons’
Thurs 26 November 2026, 7.30-9.30pm AEDT, Zoom
- Launch of ‘Poetry on Fire’ and Longlist + Winners reading
Zoom Poetry Reading
Lyn McCredden and B.R. Dionysius reading from their new collections, and Open Mic
Thursday 22 OCT 2026, 7.30-9.00pm AEDT
Join in this special Zoom poetry event to hear both great poets read – a must for all of us listening, reading and thinking about the insights that poetry can bring.
And Open Mic poets to hear of course. If you would like an Open Mic spot – 3 mins in the Zoom light – email us at info@liquidamberpress.com.au
Released by Lyn McCredden
McCredden’s work shows us why poetry matters. Released offers plenitude in the face of unbearable loss, infinite care for the least of these, piercing diagnoses in an age of apathy and the repainting of the world in complex gleaming hues. These poems utterly undo us, yet they also act to bind our deepest wounds. Lachlan Brown
Lyn McCredden
Lyn McCredden has written and taught poetry at a number of Australian universities. She has been published in Overland, Meanjin, Eureka Street, Southerly, Antipodes, The Catholic Worker and Westerly. Her first published volume of poetry was Wanting Only (Ginninderra Press, 2017).
She is the author of eight critical volumes, including Earthed and Sacred: the fiction of Tim Winton (SUP, 2019), Intimate Horizons: the Post-Colonial Sacred in Australian Literature (ATF Press, 2012, with Frances Devlin Glass and Bill Ashcroft), and Luminous Moments (ATF, 2010).
She lives with her partner and dog amongst trees, kangaroos, echidnas and acres of sky in Castlemaine, Central Victoria, Australia, on Dja Dja Wurrung Country.
Book your ticket below
Free general admission, and supporter and patron tickets available
Not for Heroics by B.R. Dionysius
In a world increasingly lurching toward authoritarianism and division, B.R. Dionysius’s Not for Heroics is a poetic counterpoint to stereotypical representations of ‘heroes’ and ‘heroic’ acts that are glamourised by political agendas, in media texts, film, and popular culture as glorious acts of individual ‘human’ brilliance. This collection seeks to recover and to honour the everyday heroics of ordinary people, places, objects, animals, insects and things that just do their job in the world without any fanfare or narcissistic glorification.
B.R. Dionysius
B.R. Dionysius was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He is the author of five poetry collections – Fatherlands (2000, Five Islands Press), Bacchanalia (2002, Interactive Press), Bowra (2013, Whitmore Press), Weranga (2013, Walleah Press), Critical State (2022, Calanthe Press); a verse novel, Universal Andalusia (2006, SOI 3) and two chapbooks : The Negativity Bin (2010, PressPress) and The Curious Noise of History (2011, Picaro Press). He won the 1998 Harri Jones Memorial Prize, the 2002 IP Picks Best Poetry Award, the 2009 Max Harris Poetry Award, was a joint winner of the 2000 Five Islands Press New Poets Program, the 2011 Whitmore Press Manuscript Prize, and the 2016 Paul Sherman Community Poetry Award. He was short-listed in the 2013 and 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize. He was recently awarded a 2023 Queensland Writers’ Fellowship from Arts Queensland, the State Library of Queensland and the Queensland Writers’ Centre to write The Eromanga Sea (2026, Calanthe Press). Not for Heroics (2026, Liquid Amber Press) is his eleventh book.
Two launches – canberra
Sahara Rain
by Stephanie Green
and
Following the Wagons
by Kimberly K. Williams
Saturday 24 October, 4.00 pm start
The best reason of all to be in the national capital on Saturday 24 October – to hear a class double act – the launch of two new poetry books from Liquid Amber Press.
Hear Cassandra Atherton launch Stephanie Green’s Sahara Rain AND Jen Webb launch Following the Wagons: A Poetic Trail by Kimberly K. Williams.
Join in to celebrate these two fabulous books. Listen to insights from Cassandra and Jen, and readings from Stephanie and Kimberly. And enjoy the fellowship of poetry.
Stephanie Green’s poems combine passionate concern with tender examination of the ‘erosions’ of environment, war and relationships. Landscape grounds these poems, from ‘the mineral taste’ of the Sahara, to Norway and Antarctica. Limpid imagery and unsettling questions create vulnerable poems, celebrating the ‘green flames of the living world.’ These poems will provoke you, move you and change you. Savour them.
Cathy Altmann
Kimberly K. Williams’ Following the Wagons adeptly blends primary sources with her poetic imagination to create a fascinating, perceptive and empathetic exploration of nineteenth-century women’s lives during the Westward expansion of the United States. Her extensive and innovative linguistic and structural experimentation creates impressive poetic vehicles that memorably convey the complexity of women’s lives in the American West. Nathanael O’Reilly
Book now – don’t miss a premier poetry event.
Book your ticket below
The date and time
Saturday 24 October, 4.00 to 5.30pm
The venue
Barton ArtBox, 7 Young St, Barton, Canberra ACT 2600
Tickets are free but bookings essential
Zoom Poetry Reading
Poetry on Fire launch and poet readers
Thursday 26 NOVEMBER 2026, 7.30-9.30pm AEDT
Let’s celebrate! Hear the winners and poets with poems in the Longlist from the 2026 Liquid Amber Poetry Prize.
All these poems will be in the anthology Poetry on Fire, to be launched at the event by Nathan Curnow.
Let’s catch the spark! The judges of this year’s Prize say …individually and collectively the poems in this Anthology are indeed wonderfully, disruptively, compellingly ‘on fire.’
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
Nathan Curnow
Nathan Curnow is a poet, playwright, spoken word performer, and past editor of Going Down Swinging. He is a recipient of three grants from Creative Australia and his work has been awarded numerous prizes over the last twenty-five years. He has taught creative writing at Federation University and toured Europe in 2018, opening the Heidelberg Literary Days Festival in Germany. An ex-lifeguard, he lives and works on the traditional lands of the Wathaurong people in Ballarat.
His poetry titles are: No Other Life But This (Five Islands, 2006); The Ghost Poetry Project (Puncher and Wattmann, 2009); RADAR (Walleah Press, 2012); The Right Wrong Notes (Flying Islands, 2015); The Apocalypse Awards (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2016), and A Hill to Die On (Liquid Amber Press, 2024).