Saturday Night Poets | Perth Poetry Festival 2026

Perth Poetry Festival 2026

Saturday Night Poets

A Saturday Night of Live Poetry

Date: Saturday, 29 August 2026

Time: 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Venue: City of Perth Library, 573 Hay Street, Perth WA 6000

Saturday Night Poets brings together a remarkable mix of voices for one of the Perth Poetry Festival's big nights of live poetry in the heart of the city.

Across styles, forms, generations and lived experience, this year's poets bring work that is searching, surprising, playful, urgent and deeply their own. Settle in for an evening of poems read and performed as they are meant to be heard: live, in a room, with an audience listening.

Featuring:

• Reneé Pettitt-Schipp

• Giles Watson

• Coral Carter

• Leonard James

• Emilie Collyer

• Ender Başkan

Young Poets Showcase

Saturday Night Poets also makes room for the next generation of voices, with a special Young Poets Showcase bringing emerging young writers and performers to the Perth Poetry Festival stage.

Special Closing Feature

Grey Maali presents Listen!

Saturday Night Poets culminates in Grey Maali, an immersive collaboration between four accomplished WA artists: Allan Boyd, Maitland Schnaars, Kevin Gillam and James Webb.

Based on the concept of deep listening and reflection, Listen! brings together a suite of collaborative poems by Allan Boyd and Maitland Schnaars with live cello, didgeridoo, electric guitar, digital audio and visual projection.

Kevin Gillam brings cello to the work, James Webb responds on didgeridoo, while Boyd adds minimal electric guitar and digital audio manipulation. Schnaars' poetry incorporates elements of spoken Noongar language, with the work moving through politics and culture, power and loss, hope and renewal.

But this is not poetry set to a fixed score. Grey Maali works through improvisation, responding aurally to the structure of the poems and to the sensation of the space itself. The result is a performance that changes each time it is made: poetry, sound and image meeting in the room to create something that can only happen once.

A fitting final feature for a night devoted to what poetry can become when we listen differently.

Hosted by

Samantha Melia, Deputy Chair of WA Poets Inc. and Festival Director of the Perth Poetry Festival.

Books

Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event courtesy of our official festival bookseller, Rabble Books & Games.

Accessibility:

This event is wheelchair accessible. The City of Perth Library has lift access, accessible toilets and accessible parking nearby. Please contact us if you have specific access needs.

Acknowledgement of Country:

We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are operating on, the Whadjuk people and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region. We pay our respects to them and their cultures; and to elders both past and present.

Come spend Saturday night with poets who have something to say, and hear what happens when those words meet a room ready to listen.

Visit perthpoetryfestival.com for the full festival program and more information.

Book your place for Saturday Night Poets.