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Jun 22
Upcoming Poetry Events
Open mics, poetry slams, book launches, workshops, festivals and more!
Hi everyone! Welcome to your fave monthly Uplift Poetry newsletter, featuring upcoming poetry events happening throughout Australia and online. Whether you’re looking to write, listen, or perform, there’s plenty of events to check out. Scroll down to view our list of open mics, poetry slams, book launches, workshops, festivals and more.
Uplift Poetry ∙ 1 LIKES ∙ 1 RESTACKS
Jun 9
History of Pride in Poetry
LGBTQ+ Poetry from Stonewall to the AIDS Crisis
Dear read poetry friends,
read poetry ∙ 31 LIKES ∙ 6 RESTACKS
Jun 17
Poem: 'The Contract' by Alex Campbell
Responding to one of 60 Speed Poetry Prompts
Today we’re pleased to publish the poem ‘The Contract’ by Alex Campbell, in response to the prompt ‘homesick’ from 60 Speed Poetry Prompts, thanks to Echoes from the Cave Inn.
6 LIKES ∙ 2 RESTACKS
Caz Masel
Fantastic poem. Made me homesick too.
Lancelot Schaubert
Mercy. Quite the death to go from “forsaking all others” to “fill dirt in the infinite depth of the soul.”
Jun 12
The Wisdom of Flowers
A collection of poems written by the Poetry Outdoors community.
Dear Friends,
Poetry Outdoors, Abbie Shanahan, and 3 others ∙ 38 LIKES ∙ 7 RESTACKS
Gun-Marie Engström
I really enjoyed immersing in the poems. They made a beautiful whole experience as I read them one after the other. Thank you so much, all poets♥️♥️♥️
KHM
There’s so much sensuality (in both senses of the word!) in these poems, and a repeating image of embrace and warmth, closeness. It’s interesting how different the beauty looks and feels when you sit with it, rather than barely acknowledge it in a passing glance. It feels so much more real. Thank y’all for sharing 🩵
Jun 10
Poetry lets me look at one thing closely and slowly for a long time.
"In the rest of my life it is loud and busy and chaotic and I flit from one thing to another in a deeply inefficient way." An interview with Nia Broomhall, the poet behind May's Poem of the Month.
Nia Broomhall won May's Poem of the Month with My Daughter Moves Home. Here is our usual poet interview, delivered on the 10th of each month with the current POTM poet.
VERVE Poetry ∙ 26 LIKES ∙ 2 RESTACKS
Jun 21
Gathered from the Week
Poetry, Nature, Voice, and Witness Roundup
More Than Poetry ∙ 18 LIKES ∙ 4 RESTACKS
Jun 23
Classroom Series: Meter
Finding Your Poetic Rhythm
Dear read poetry friends,
read poetry ∙ 16 LIKES ∙ 1 RESTACKS
Seraphina
I really liked the poem
Caca y mas caca
I enjoyed the poem at the end by Kimberly Blaiser
Jun 14
Things Take the Time They Take.
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
Poetry Outdoors ∙ 44 LIKES ∙ 6 RESTACKS
Jen Boulette
Stage four
All the world’s a stage
Don’t worry
This is just this stage
blue
3 am awake. Don't worry,
How many others have been sleepless
And didn't they survive?
Jun 9
Nothing is Too Small to be Wondered About
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
43 LIKES ∙ 5 RESTACKS
t-raise us up with Thérèse
This is nothing less than an enchantment. I am enamoured there is so much expansiveness in the small things we ponder.
Requiem for a Grasshopper
I took down a mug for my tea
from the high cupboards
of my kitchen
I went to pour
but there
at the base
was a grasshopper
the length of my finger nail
Still greenish
but dried out
long dead
Its body neat
legs tucked up
and out
like miniature triangles
all angles
but in perfect form
How did you get in there
Why did you hop
into my cup
When did you make
your final rest there
when there are seventy
potted plants
in my indoor garden
eight metres away
Little fellow
you could have
eaten your fill
of green leaves there
grown big enough
for me to hear
your pretty chirps
so I could release you
once I found you
into my outside garden
where the larger
hoppers hop
I've released so many
grasshoppers
before you
I've felt their strong legs
fighting to escape
my loosely closed hand
like frogs
or lizards
occasional butterflies
or the swallows
that nest in our eaves
that get a fright
as I open sliding doors
that lead to the patio
I free them all
I love to save
the living things
that lose their way
So why did you
spring into
my high cupboard
to make a tomb
in my teacup
when you could
have had
a life
that was
expansive
within the greenery
eating your way
to some great size
in the life
you were
hatched for
grasshopper
Gun-Marie Engström
Requiem for a blue tit
I miss you,
my one legged tiny friend.
You came to the feeder on my kitchen window
we hung out
in the summer,
we enjoyed the autumn air
Then winter came
and I didn't see you
When spring came
I rejoiced at you return
Admiring your survival skills.
The following spring
I looked for you every day
Eager to salute you....
Jun 21
Solstice stories
this June day
Dear friends,
Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 252 LIKES ∙ 16 RESTACKS
Lisa Marie Simmons
Hello and happy solstice, friends, and thank you, Pádraig, for this luminous prompt on this luminous day.
I cannot recall one specific summer solstice, but what the word conjures is the summertime freedom of youth, a day long enough to contain everything: swimming in the sea, laughter, worries left at the shore, a perfect book, rosé, and the all-encompassing lust of summer. And then, when the day had given all it had, a campfire crackling under an endless canopy of stars, a guitar, friends lying back scanning the sky for shooting stars, young love burning as brightly as the flames. As brightly as those stars. The night so wide and generous it felt like it would never close. Wishing you all a day long enough to contain everything.
Three Gates South
It was late afternoon, early evening.
My wife was mending our trampoline.
My sons were playing backyard soccer.
I was collecting tree clippings into our green bin.
And we were like, "Shouldn't it be darker by now?"
Jun 21
The Forecast of Grief
Your weekly Mary Oliver poem and writing prompt.
Welcome to Dream Work: A Year-Long Writing Journey with Mary Oliver
Poetry Outdoors ∙ 31 LIKES ∙ 2 RESTACKS
blue
Skying
Birds on my chest. Sky
like a face about to break
bad news. Wordless drifting
on a stream of unconscious
thought. incomprehensible
texture of an old damp coat.
Inside, lights forget their own
off-switches, lackadaisically
senseless, produce
a sweet halogen glare.
Replace the sun with the un-sun. Constable
used to observe the wet weather.
tracing the shape of the clouds,
called it skying. I can’t look up anymore.
Face Melter
On A Crying Deity
Zaven Ovian
God has crammed inside a cloud to cry
upon the earth the tears that every human shed
We die and we evaporate
And to the skies our sadness goes to come back
down and fill a street with puddles
Or roll off ducklings’ backs and meld
our crumbled bones as one in solar
winds that blew the forests down in fire
God could weep and put the fires out,
breathe deep and put them down
with just a gust, but
we had started them and
He can only do so much
May 31
Some words about change
and the changes change contains
Dear friends,
Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 290 LIKES ∙ 15 RESTACKS
courtney weaver jr.
The Quiet Tug-of-War
There was a year I refused
to let go of the past's grip.
Its fingers, bruised and brittle,
curled tight around my spine,
kept me tethered to a version
of myself that no longer fit.
I told myself change was surrender,
as though my defiance were armor.
Burned bridges became monuments—
silent, smoldering reminders
that standing still is easier
than walking into the unknown.
In my sixth sober year, I saw it:
How resistance isn't strength,
just a clenched jaw caving inward,
fighting tides that gift their release
when you finally uncurl, exhale.
Relief came soft as wet earth,
a different kind of gravity,
less like loss, more like choosing
to pack light for the journey forward.
Anne Pender
Oh, these lines… “All this time, I felt like I had to describe / the things I did, and what was done to me” - a whole lifetime in there...
For so long, I resisted the changes that becoming a mother wanted – needed - to make in me for me to become the person my children needed. I kicked against all its demands – no time to myself, no time to sleep, no patience, no patience, no patience. The constant draining physicality of caring for babies, of being “touched out” at the end of a day and craving five minutes where nobody would pull on me. But ironically – in the way these things happen - it was my youngest child’s constant kicking against me – and herself, and the world – that finally opened my eyes to what I actually needed to do, which was to stop fighting it all of it and just be with it. Whenever she had yet another meltdown, I would hold her tightly, as she pushed and pushed against me until suddenly, she would just collapse, like soft butter in my arms. I realised that by holding steady in the face of her resistance instead of feeding it with my own, I gave that resistance nowhere to go and it would just dissolve, both of us finding some blessed peace and release, if only for a while. I have carried this lesson with me in the decades that have followed, learning and re-learning it as life has thrown other change challenges in my path. And I keep a copy of this painting by the English artist Jenny Saville, as a reminder that whatever I feed grows and that “giving in” is not always defeat but may actually be the saving of me... https://www.artforum.com/events/jenny-saville-4-195996/
May 24
What time is it?
(it’s pantoum time)
Dear friends,
Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 352 LIKES ∙ 52 RESTACKS
Michael T Smith
The day my wife and son go to church
And I stay behind
Although yesterday I spoke something
As I write, I become unraveled
And I stay behind
When I was younger I would draw pictures
As I write, I become unraveled
I couldn’t have known how fast it would go
When I was younger I would draw pictures
And anyway I still draw, well paint
I couldn’t have known how fast it would go
I had a dream that God told me to stop
And anyway I still draw, well paint
Although yesterday I spoke something
I had a dream that God told me to stop
The day my wife and son go to church
Adam Lauver
Today is the day my friends leave
and I think I'll miss them when they're gone
although yesterday I wasn't so sure.
As I write, I wonder about friends
and I think I'll miss them when they're gone.
When I was younger I wanted them to miss me.
As I wrote, I'd wonder about friends:
I couldn’t have known how much I'd miss
when I was younger. I wanted to be missed,
and anyway, is every missing a lack?
I couldn’t have known how much I'd miss.
I had a dream I was stuck, waving at the gate
and anyway, is every missing a lack?
Tomorrow I may not be so sure.
In this one I'm stuck again, waving at the gate.
Today is the day I leave.
Jun 14
Exploring the present with the past
and how conversations with centuries are contemporary
Dear friends,
Pádraig Ó Tuama ∙ 185 LIKES ∙ 16 RESTACKS
Lisa Marie Simmons
Hello and happy Sunday to this wonderful group. Thank you, Pádraig. Isn't it delightful that every single week there is someone in the comments who says, what kismet, I was just thinking about this. Today that person is me.
Pádraig, that image of the past as a living Creature with claws is so apt a phrase for what I’m exploring, because for two years I sat on my yoga mat every morning and turned toward exactly that beast, thanking ancestors I couldn't yet picture, compelled by the recognition that I didn't come from a void. Resilience, creativity, perseverence, I had finally realized that none of it was self-invented. After two years of that daily practice, I found my birth mother. The ancestors, apparently, were waiting for me to say good morning first. Now the stories she and our family tell are soil I am actively growing in, feeding a large work I am deeply immersed in right now.
Anne Pender
It can be overwhelming, sometimes, to reflect on all the negative weight of history, and the cycles of war, oppression and domination that seem to recur with depressing regularity. But then I read something written by another human centuries ago and I am reminded that there is so much more that connects us than divides us and that what I’m going through today was experienced by someone else in another time and place.
For example, I came across a phrase from Plato’s Symposium recently, where he talks about the feeling of meeting a soulmate. He describes the experience as one of “… an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy” and it just felt so real and true and beautiful, even two thousand years later.
I also love this perspective from James Baldwin on history and time and the importance of remembering those who have gone before us:
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”
Jun 7
Emily Dickinson, buttercups, and death
(plus a strange typo)
Dear friends,
Poetry Unbound ∙ 333 LIKES ∙ 34 RESTACKS
Lyn Taylor Hale
For the eleven years I lived there, my mother always said she wanted to die in the living room (ah, the irony) of my hilltop home, looking out at the Green Mountains and Lake Champlain. However, her last illness took place in North Carolina where she grew so weak she could not travel. Nine days before she died, she paid a fortune to have an ambulance transport her, it took them 19 hours, from North Carolina to my Vermont living room. Hospice put a hospital bed and oxygen in that room, taught me how to care for her, and for nine days my mom, Toby (my gentle Labradoodle) and I listened to Bach and watched the Greens. The sunrises. The changing colors of water and sky. The red geraniums in the window boxes. I administered so much morphine and held her--her hand or body. Toby and I slept on the couch adjacent to the bed. She died at 2:00 a.m. on a Sunday. It was agonizing and good enough.
Lisa Marie Simmons
Hello all. My sister died by suicide during Covid. She had bipolar disorder and had been suffering for a long time. I've resisted the 'released from pain' frame; it feels too small for her. But she was someone who deeply touched many lives, and as I went through her papers, I came to think she knew something about what she needed. Whether that counts as 'good enough' I still don't know. Carrying my remembrances of her feels like carrying her through that field of buttercups. She was beautiful, fierce, and aching. Your line, Pádraig, “One of the strange things about being alive is that death is part of it.” That sentence is reverberating in my bones. We’ve lost more than I knew I could bear, and I'm aware now that death is no longer something happening elsewhere or to others. My sister walked into that truth before I was ready. I'm still catching up to her.
Jun 23
Tanka Tuesday Challange #3
Five lines. One image. Infinite longing.
Sapphra | Poetry ∙ 10 LIKES ∙ 6 RESTACKS
cbbhattacharya | poetry
summer peaches glow—
sumptuous sweetness deepens
in the late June sun.
golden juice runs down my chin,
each bite a rare luxury.
Untamed Eulogy
Ink stained fingertips,
who tucks handwritten notes in,
Heart left far behind,
into the very pocket
of your favorite blue jeans.
Jun 10
Introducing: Utterly Human
in defense of the imperfect, the embodied, and the creaturely.
Dear Poets,
Arcana Poetry Press ∙ 72 LIKES ∙ 6 RESTACKS
The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletter
Jun 15
Glimmers - Submissions are now open!
A collaboration between The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press and Poetry Pharmacy
swifts watercolour by Colin Thomdarts of wild choreography long winter on the wing forked tails flash V for victory skirling bursts open spring - a wee ´glimmers´ poem by Claire Thom
The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press ∙ 46 LIKES ∙ 16 RESTACKS
Joanna
What a beautiful project, such a lovely poem.
Katherine E Winnick
Beautiful glimmer Claire x
Jun 5
Poetry Prompts—June 2026
Part of the purpose of Rabbit Room Poetry is to not only nourish your creativity with excellent featured work but also give you actionable steps for moving forward with your own poetic projects. At the beginning of every month, we share a roundup of poetry prompts created by our Director of Content, Andy Patton, to whet your imagination and launch you i…
The Rabbit Room ∙ 74 LIKES ∙ 9 RESTACKS
Joy wildman
MYLOR
I come here often
Think I’m drawn by the trees
Bending Beckoning
Dappled light
Translucent leaves
Great strong centres
Such deep welcome
In their silence
Such joy
In their beauty
Such wisdom
in their staying power
Home
PANKTI
Prompt #2
Lamentations 3:24
Tender mercy wisps
Flutter down daily on wings
Anew with the dawn
(-)
This poem is part of a series I wrote inspired by the May prompts.
Literary Feast: Poetry and Prose
Jun 19
Hospitable Poetry #15
Melanie Bettinelli on "Tin Foil" by Doireann Ní Ghríofa
If you are new to our series, here is the link to find the intro on hospitable poetry and the previous posts by Renee Emerson, A. A. Kostas, Brit McReynolds, Mark Rico, Esther Jane, Kilby Austin, Zane Paxton, Robert Charboneau, Nick Chapman-Jones, Rosa Lía Gilbert
Melanie Bettinelli and Abigail ∙ 28 LIKES ∙ 6 RESTACKS
Ann Collins
Melanie and Abigail, thanks for this joyful romp. Melanie, I respect the way you let your beloved have a say in whether or not this qualifies as a hospitable poem. And I agree with your definition of hospitality vs. accessibility.
I love the way Doireann Ní Ghríofa pulls off a poetic slight-of-hand trick that transforms an everyday random annoyance into a mischievous escapade. I’m sure I will always think of this poem anytime the foil falls out of its ridiculously shallow sharp-edged box. I’m sure, instead of feeling miffed, I will laugh and wish for a shining silver river and a canoe! Thank you for the gift of laughter, Melanie. And thank you, Abigail, for continuing this series. It’s shaping up to be a true community feast of memorable and lovable poems. May they keep coming!
Leah | Blessed Endurance
Thank you for this one! I loved reading the exchange between you (Melanie) and your husband. Thank you also for the discussion on hospitality in the context of this poem.
Jun 19
Craft & Play Vol. 55
Driving in dreams
Dear friends,
Of Trees & Poetry, Julia McMullen, and E R Skulmoski ∙ 30 LIKES ∙ 3 RESTACKS
Jun 21
Poetry Prompt of the Week: Story as Scaffolding
In this contemplative prompt, tell a half-story as a way to explore a shadow experience.
It is, again, the longest day of the year, which always reminds me of my favorite Sharon Olds poem.
Robert Wood Lynn ∙ 12 LIKES ∙ 1 RESTACKS
Jun 16
A Community for Poetry Nerds
Introducing you to what The Formal Poetry Directorate is all about.
It has been two weeks since we launched this publication, so it is time to actually tell you what our agenda is. We are poets, we are nerds, and we have a plan: to gather our friends in a space where we can all grow together. My name is Brooklyn Crane, and, together with
Brooklyn Crane ∙ 30 LIKES ∙ 11 RESTACKS
Tim Forsythe
Good on you guys for all you do to promote poets. Substack would be a shallow sea without you.
Aaliya
There is something beautiful about people gathering around a craft simply because they love it. Wishing this community every success ❤️
Jun 19
So Much Water: A Memory Poem and a Painting of Roses
My Grandmother's Swimsuit and Brad's Painting from Friendship Park
So Much Water
Plein Air Poetry, Alexandra McIntosh, and Brad Davis ∙ 15 LIKES ∙ 1 RESTACKS
Sheena Marie
Beautiful compilation. My father passed a few years back and loved the water. The themes here overlapped in a way that made everything rhyme in my soul. Thank you. <3
Abigail
I had completely forgotten that sensation of going hand over hand until you reach the bottom of the pool. I think it was my mother's leg. Your recall of sensory imagery, as always, is so specific and brings me right to a forgotten moment. Gorgeous painting: so vivid and lush. Amazing work, both of you.
Jun 19
The FreeWrite: Week 52 Prompt
Procrastinationnnnnn
Hi Friends!
Talicha J. Poetry ∙ 1 LIKES ∙ 1 RESTACKS
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