Every moment needs fresh voices.
The Poetry Company is building Australia’s first Youth Poet Laureate Program for poets aged 18-25.
We’ll elevate the nation’s most brilliant young poets, embed their voices in public life, and gather audiences to enjoy their work. This program is a first for Australia, supporting a Youth Poet Laureate from every state and territory to join a curated mentorship program running across 2027-2028.
Eight exceptional young poets aged 18-25 will be selected through an open call-out and nomination process, and an expert panel will appoint one poet from the cohort as the National Youth Poet Laureate. Together, these eight poets will form a powerful cohort of young voices, sharing their work with audiences across the country.
This isn’t just about publishing and performance — it’s about leadership, learning, and using poetry to shape change. More young writers will become poets, more Australians will experience their poetry, and the voices of our young people will be amplified in all their diversity.
Introducing the Youth Poet Laureate program:
Help us make it happen!
This is Australia’s first ever Youth Poet Laureate Program, and we need your support to make it happen.
Sign up to our Newsletters to follow news about the program. When the time comes, you can apply or encourage the young poets in your life to do so.
And, if you are able, please make a donation. It's tax deductible and it will help us build the program.
We’ll be casting our net wide for the nation's most talented young poets, partnering with libraries, festivals, slam communities, and poetry organisations to find and support young poets to apply and get involved.
We will select 8 State or Territory Youth Poet Laureates (aged 18-25), with one becoming the national representative. They’ll be mentored, paid for their work, and invited to speak and perform at public events across the country, from writers’ festivals to test matches, from music festivals to openings of Parliament.
For more info and FAQs, read this story on our blog.
For the Under 18s, there's our School Poet Laureates Program. We’ll support schools to teach poetry and run a program to select their own School Poet Laureate. Teachers will feel more confident to teach poetry and kids will feel more confident to write it. And each school will have a chance to create their own poetry heroes.
Subscribe to The Education Edit, our monthly education newsletter, to be the first to find out when the program and learning resources launch.
We’ll launch the Youth Poet Laureate Program in late 2026, and the School Poet Laureates Program in early 2027.
The first Laureates will be selected in early 2027, and their appointment will run until the end of 2028. From then, the program will run on a two-year cycle.
Pilot Program
In 2025 and 2026, we piloted the program with our Youth Ambassadors - four young poets published, programmed and mentored by four senior poets.
They shared their love of poetry and hopes for the Youth Poet Laureate Program in a series of conversations, interviews and panels.
Youth Ambassadors 2025
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A World on Fire
By Rataj AbdullahI was born into a world already on fire.
The skies stitched in smoke before I learned to say my name.
History cracked like a fault line beneath my crib,
and the lullabies were sirens softened by my mother’s hum. -
The Story of My Alphabet
By Charlee BrooksThe alphabet is made of twenty-six letters. And what about the tongue? Well, it is a muscular organ. I wish I knew how to play the organ. Covered in mucus and papillae.
What else is true? Where do you come from? I come from the blue.
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Miscommunication Style
By Maggie Knight-WilliamsI’d talk about it, tell you a story, but I’ve got this
god-awful communication style;
this inner-north therapise, insta protest televised, don’t bottle it up that’s masculinised, -
No Man's Land
By ZaftyContent note: This poem contains strong language used in service of the poet’s voice and vision.
See…I’ve been a poet since like…year four?
…Yeahh I remember, I started stringing syllables like lifelines.
Learnt to link my language tighter
Reflections from the Poets
Poetry Mentors 2025
Youth Ambassadors 2026
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home reimagined
By Isabella Eichler-OnusWhen did we become so unfamiliar? Were we collectively wronged, or did I just let go? Like my gut with the dip in the road. Thread pulling organs down, before the body has a chance to react. // Whiplash from this new new music in an old place. 70,000 years old. Sing us a song! No more than a mumble in the passenger seat. Sun’s heat magnified by th… -
they heard how we are cedar
By Jihad Yassinethey used our children
for their walls
and took it literally because they do not know the beauty of our poetry
they call themselves ‘peace makers’ -
Dentist Appointment
By Arantza Garcia Ferrandyou lay back / uncomfortable / in a sterile chair. counting
clock beats / heart beats / till / end / of / session. he hovers
above like / falcon / or maybe vulture / picking / at the dead
animal / in your mouth. carrion eating decay / he fills his plate. -
The Job
By Janiru LiyanageYou go your whole life believing
dying is the easy part, then one day
your great aunt gets a brain tumour the size of a
kumquat burrowing inside her hippocampus, and
