The Bookshelf
The Bookshelf
ABC Australia
Top Poems of the 21st Century
54 minutes Posted Oct 2, 2025 at 7:00 am.
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Show notes
What are your favourite poems of the last 25 years? The ones that you turn to, couplets memorised and shared, the lines that leapt from the page or stage. Poetry that both defined and defied space and time, whether it rhymed or not.
Join Kate Evans, as she is joined by acclaimed author and poet Maxine Beneba Clarke, Stella Prize-winning poet and academic Sarah Holland-Batt, much-loved broadcaster and author Daniel Browning, and best-selling author and journalist Julia Baird to discuss and read some of the poems that have shone brightest for each of them this century, as well as how the art-form has evolved.
This event was presented at the State Library of NSW in partnership with Red Room Poetry.
POETS AND POETRY MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Warsan Shire, Home
Adam Zagajewski, Try to Praise the Mutilated World
Graeme Dixon, Six Feet of Land Rights
Gwen Harwood, In the Park
Anonymous Rose,  Broken World
Zora Howard and Joshya Bennett, Still Life with Police Sirens
Ali Cobby Eckermann, works
Simon Armitage, The Shout
Evelyn Araluen, decolonial poetics (avant gubba)
Candy Royale, works
Max Porter, works
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans
Producer, Kate Evans, Lisa Needham
Sound engineer, Ann Marie Debettencor
Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown