Explore poetry's power to address life's issues in this practical workshop.

In Siobhan Harvey’s workshop, explore poetry’s power to address important issues of our lives, be they personal or political, cultural or communal. We’ll consider the role of inspiration, language, music, structure and technique in shaping a poem’s meaning and message. We’ll also read, examine and reflect on existing poems, and apply our learnings to the development of a poem of our own from draft to completion. For serious and emerging poets, songwriters and short-form aficionados. Books will be for sale. 

Siobhan Harvey is the author of nine books of poetry and nonfiction including the memoir, What We Remember, What We Forget (OUP 2026) which was a category winner in the 2025 Memoir Prize for Books (US) and highly commended in the 2024 Bridport Memoir Award (UK). Presently, she’s shortlisted for the Heroine Women’s Writing Prize (Aus), and won the 2023 Landfall Essay Competition, 2021 Janet Frame Literary Trust Award for Poetry, 2019 Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems, 2018 Robert Burns Poetry Prize, and 2013 Kathleen Grattan Award. She teaches creative writing at AUT. 

The workshop costs $30 and includes morning tea. Registration required via Hamilton Book Month website.

The Trust Waikato Building is in Little London Lane, off London Street, Hamilton. The Trust has a sizeable carpark and there is ample parking outside and close by.