FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER

OPENING EVENT
Featuring Djinama Yilaga,
Rick Morton, & More

6:30PM TATHRA HALL

6:30pm - 6:45pm
Welcome to Country and Djinama Yilaga Choir Performance

The Djinama Yilaga Choir is a local intergenerational Yuin choir, established in 2019 and led by renowned Walbunga/Ngarigo artist, Cheryl Davison. Djinama Yilaga perform songs in Dhurga language and regularly perform at festivals and public events nationally.

6.45pm - 7.30pm
Rick Morton: Mean Streak
In conversation with Eddie Williams

Award-winning journalist Rick Morton tells the story of one of the Australian government’s largest failures, one with devastating consequences for close to half a million welfare recipients. Join Rick and ABC’s Eddie Williams as they discuss the powerfully moving and utterly enraging story of the Robo-debt scandal.

Poets X Four

8:30PM - 9:30PM TATHRA HOTEL - FREE EVENT
JACQUI MALINS, SARAH TEMPORAL, MELINDA SMITH & JUDITH NANGALA CRISPIN

Join us for a showcase of diverse and dynamic poets featuring Sarah Temporal, Melinda Smith, Judith Crispin and Jacqui Malins. These four poets each have their own unique style, covering a range of themes, stories and insights.

Join us for a showcase of diverse and dynamic poets featuring Sarah Temporal, Melinda Smith, Judith Nangala Crispin and Jacqui Malins. These four poets each have their own unique style, covering a range of themes, stories and insights. The Tathra Hotel is the ideal setting for this poetic experience and the event is free. However, registrations are required to ensure we can accommodate our audience.

Jacqui Malins is a performance poet and multidisciplinary artist, living and making on Ngunawal and Ngambri land (Canberra). Her poetry collection 'F-Words' was published in 2021 (Recent Work Press). Jacqui has created and performed several poetry-theatre shows including 'Words in Flight' and 'Cavorting with Time', and performed at events including Poetry on the Move, the Woodford Festival, National Folk Festival and National Poetry Month Gala. She directed and produced Canberra's 2023 Poetic City Festival.You can find Jacqui and her work on stage and page, in galleries and online at www.jacquimalinsart.com.

Sarah Temporal is a prize-winning poet living on Bundjalung lands in the NSW Northern Rivers. Her writing is concerned with revealing our hidden selves, and ranges from personal confessions to reclaimed fairy tales. Her work has been anthologised in Best of Australian Poems, Heroines Anthology, Australian Poetry Anthology and more, and was shortlisted for the Val Vallis Award. With a background in education, she has taught poetry to hundreds of people from ages 8 to 89, and now runs a regional arts initiative (Poets Out Loud) to empower voices of all ages. Arriving after twenty years of performing live, Tight Bindings is her first published collection.

Melinda Smith lives and writes on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country. Her poetry career spans 23 years and 8 books, and she won the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award in 2014. She has been invited to read her work all over Australia and in Italy, New Zealand and Japan. Melinda enjoys collaborating with artists from other disciplines including visual arts, dance and music. She also teaches in the Creative Writing program at the University of Canberra, is a former poetry editor of the Canberra Times, and former co-organiser of the That Poetry Thing reading series at Smith's Alternative.

Judith Nangala Crispin is an award-winning poet, academic and visual artist of Indigenous and mixed descent. She has published two collections of poetry and her verse novel will be released this year. She holds a Ph. D in music from the ANU and has completed a Doctor of Arts in Poetry at the University of Sydney. Judith directed the Kurdiji 1.0 Aboriginal suicide prevention project with Black Dog Institute, and the direction of the Julfa Project at the Australian Catholic University.