Solid Air: Australian Spoken Word Poetry

Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Ani) an Australian-born Māori who belongs to the Te Rarawa iwi in Hokianga, Aotearoa NZ.  She lives on unceded Wangal Country. She is a cultural producer, writer, editor and weaver. Most recently she has ...

David Stavanger is an Australian poet, performer, cultural producer, editor and lapsed psychologist. His first full-length poetry collection The Special (UQP) was awarded the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the Wesley Michel Wright Poetry Prize. David is the co-editor of  SOLID AIR: Collected Australian & New Zealand Spoken Word (UQP) and his latest collection Case Notes (UWAP) won the 2021 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Poetry. 

These days he lives between the stage and the page.

π.O. is a legendary figure in the Australian poetry scene, born and bred in Fitzroy, the great chronicler of Melbourne and its culture and migrations, a highly disciplined anarchist who worked as a draughtsman for forty years to support his art.

He is currently editor of the experimental magazine Unusual Work. He is a pioneer of performance poetry in Australia and the author of many collections, including Panash, Fitzroy Poems, Big Numbers: New and Selected Poems, and the two epic works 24 Hours and Fitzroy: The Biography. His book Heide with Giramondo won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award in 2020, and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry in the same year. 

Laniyuk is a Larrakia, Kungarakan, Gurindji and French writer and performer. She has been published nationally and internationally in poetry collections such as Solid Air (2019) and Fire Front (2020), in the 2022 speculative ...

Emilie Zoey Baker is an award-winning Australian poet and spoken-word performer who has toured nationally and internationally performing and writing. She was a Fellow at the State Library of Victoria, and has previously ...

Joelistics’ great gift is the crafting of common language into evocative turns of phrase. As a rapper, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, actor and advocate for diversity, he is recognised as a unique voice in the Australian ...

Bjork once said 'you shouldn’t let poets lie to you', but Fury writes poetry, which is a sort of lie, albeit the fun-for-everyone kind. Fury has written a book called I Don’t Understand How Emotions Work. It is a very good book; soft and tricky, like leaning your face against your favourite swan.

Upani Perera, Zhoujing Chu, Neha De Alwis and Ruth Jarra are Year 11 students from Nossal High School who had the opportunity to compete in the 2019 Eco!Slam Poetry Competition. Coming in with only a tentative interest and vague idea of the workings of slam poetry, the four girls performed their poem without knowing what to expect. The girls each come from different cultural backgrounds but were raised in Australia, which led to choosing to speak on a topic that is valuable to them: how they fit into a country that is hugely different from their families’ homelands.