How to Cast a Poem, with Shastra Deo

Join us on Halloween for HOW TO CAST A POEM, a poetry and spellcraft workshop with Shastra Deo.

What if poetry could make something happen? In this 90-minute generative poetry workshop, we’ll consider poems as acts of spellcasting and invocation. We’ll work with repetition, ritual, the strange bargains we make with language, and discover what the poem might demand in return.

Bring your notebook!
Drinks, snacks and spare pens will be provided.

Shastra Deo is the author of The Agonist (UQP 2017), which won the 2016 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 ALS Gold Medal, and The Exclusion Zone (UQP 2023), which was longlisted for the 2024 ALS Gold Medal. Her poetry walks the crossroads that bind prophecy and play.

Your ticket includes a $2 donation to Literacy For Life, a First Nations-run charity training local people to deliver literacy classes in their communities. Tickets are non-refundable.

Reading and writing on the unceded land of the Turrbal and Yuggera peoples. We respect and acknowledge Elders past and present, and all First Nations storytellers. Every story on our shelves sits alongside the world’s oldest living stories, reminding us that stories are not just read, but also lived and passed on.