RABBIT WORKSHOPS

During 2025 and 2026, Rabbit will be offering a suite of free online workshops for poets to explore, develop and refine their 'nonfiction poetry' skills. The first of these workshops is themed 'History/Biography' and run by Rabbit editor Jessica Wilkinson (now closed for applications).

We are now open for applications for our second workshop, details below:

Rabbit: A Nonfiction Poetry Workshop no. 2: Childhood

Workshop no. 2: Childhood will be run by Anders Villani on SATURDAY 7th JUNE, 1pm-4pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

If, as Louise Glück suggests, “we look at the world once, in childhood,” how can we respond poetically to what we saw? This workshop will consider the ways that writing poems about childhood foregrounds the relation between memory and truth. Through readings and exercises, we will explore poetry’s capacity to study this relation, and voice the play of certainty, doubt, paradox, clarity, perspective, ethics, disclosure, and concealment it entails. Participants will develop their own thinking about how nonfiction poetry expresses childhood material, and produce work that traverses the borders of historical fact and subjective experience. 

Participants will also have the opportunity to send one poem to the facilitator after the workshop for some light feedback.

As places are limited to 20, we ask that you submit the following as your Expression of Interest* via this link:
1. A statement of 100 words or less telling us why you want to take this workshop and what you hope to get out of it
2. A bio of 50 words or less, telling us about yourself as a writer

DEADLINE for EOI: Friday 9th May 2025

We will notify applicants within two weeks of the closing deadline.

A note on the workshop facilitator:

Anders Villani is the author of two poetry collections, Aril Wire (Five Islands Press, 2018) and Totality (Recent Work Press, 2022). He holds an MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he received the Delbanco Prize for poetry, and a PhD from Monash University. Anders’s work has appeared in many local and international publications, including Best of Australian Poems, Overland, Island, and Frontier Poetry (USA). He co-judged the 2022 Peter Porter Poetry Prize. Assistant poetry editor of Australian Book Review, he lives in Naarm/Melbourne.

With thanks to Creative Australia for generously supporting Rabbit's new phase of publishing and workshop activities.