Celebrate the best Australian poetry with Red Room 30in 30, bringing one fresh poem a day all throughout August.

Every day across poetry month, the legends at Red Room are set to deliver one spanking fresh new poem a day from some of the country’s leading poets, authors, and spoken word artists.

30in30 is the pièce de résistance for this year’s Poetry Month, which highlights the very best Australian poetry on offer. Original commissions and new works from Australia’s finest Poetry and Youth Ambassadors, Red Room Poetry Fellow Scott-Patrick Mitchell, the 2022 City of Sydney Poets in Residence Dan Hogan and Mohammad Awad, collaborative poems from Fair Trade, and new lines from the likes of Maria Tumarkin, Stephen Edgar, Eloise Grills, Elfie Shiosaki, Damon Young, Gavin Yuan Gao, Huda the Goddess and more.

From the sublime depths that speak to the red earth of this land to the sweet stylings of modern-day Shakespearean prose. Let the lyrical talent of Australia’s finest wash over you, and allow yourself to be drawn back to the poems again and again, like the sweet return to a lover’s kiss. 

To check out the poems in their awe-inspiring entirety, head over to Red Room Poetry.

Archie Roach – Cradle of Life

I go down to the ocean

Here on the sand

Ah my heart is broken

As here I stand

Looking out over the sea

And the cradle of life

Gives me plenty

Oh the cradle of life

Reaches the shore

Oh the cradle of life

Rocks me gently

But will the cradle of life

Rock no more…

READ THE FULL POEM HERE

Jazz Money – So Too The Sunrise

so too the sunrise
with clarity and promise
of who you will rise to be

so too the breaking night
who knows dance and feast
and then resting

so too the moon
who sees all those standing
at the edge of journey…

READ THE FULL POEM HERE

Nat’s What I Reckon – Good Vibes Only!

I see you in the bar window

Shining so bright

With a seeming list of demands

For entry tonight

This super cool bar

Ain’t for no phonys

With a sign out front that says:

Good

Vibes

Only!…

READ THE FULL POEM HERE

DOBBY, SlinCraze – Identity

Generations of trauma, trickling through the leak

Eighty thousand years are fighting every week

Now’s the final hour, the world awaits your change,

yet you grip tightly the chains, and flick right through our pain

But I am here and so are they, my Old people they see you

They wouldn’t dare return in flesh if it meant they had to be you

So we stand strong and lift the voice of one another’s soul,

and breathe in our Country air to bring us back to whole…

READ THE FULL POEM HERE

Sachém Parkin-Owens – Where Love Blossomed

Concrete is where love has blossomed.

The soil beneath my leaves devoid of life,

full of misconception and missed connection.

Full of self-reflections and misapprehensions.

You could see the incisions left from the last woodchuck –

you asked me, “How much wood could a woodchuck

chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” And I said,

“A fucking lot.”…

READ THE FULL POEM HERE

Nina Oyama – Makes You Stronger

A man once showed me around a sharehouse

and whenever he showed me a bad part he said

but hey, makes you stronger.

So the sink pipes are rotten. But hey, makes you stronger.

There’s a leak in the ceiling. But hey, makes you stronger.

This is our ornamental Yayoi Kusama inspired wallpaper.

Nah just kidding, it’s mould. But hey.

Makes you stronger…

READ THE FULL POEM HERE