ABPA — The Australian Bush Poets Association Inc.

Welcome to the Australian Bush Poets Association

WELCOME. Membership of the Australian Bush Poets Association (ABPA) is comprised of writers, performers and individuals who are interested in bush poetry and enjoy written and live stories in rhyme and metre. If you have an interest in this piece of Australian culture called bush poetry, you have come to the right place.

Aims
The objectives of the Australian Bush Poets Association are to foster and encourage the growth of bush poetry in Australia. By definition, Australian bush poetry is metred and rhymed poetry about Australia, Australians and/or the Australian way of life.

Membership
To join the Australian Bush Poets Association and receive our bi-monthly magazine, go to our Membership page.

The ABPA keeps in touch with its members through this website (and forum) and our bi-monthly magazine of bush poetry news, events, results of written and performance competitions as well as samples of contemporary bush poetry. Many members have books, CDs and other products. These can be advertised in the magazine. For rates, click here. The deadline for ads and other content for the magazine is the 22nd of the month preceding publication. Magazines are published at the beginning of February, April, June, August, October and December.

Check out our Facebook page.

Verse in the Valley at Gloucester

Man from Snowy River Bush Festival

The Man from Snowy River Bush Festival 2026 (16th-19th April)
THE VICTORIAN BUSH POETRY CHAMPIONSHIPS

“Hear Ye!” “Hear Ye!” “Let it be known that the 2026 Victorian Bush Poetry Championships will once again be held in the quant little town of Corryong come April 2026”. “Come One, Come All” and join in the fun of the Snowy Mountains “Man from Snowy River Bush Festival” programme of events.

The 2026 Championships will again be offering a staggering $8000 in total prizemoney (including trophies). Yes folks, you read that right. $8000!

As well as the $4000 worth of prizemoney usually offered for the Written & Performance sections this “Premier” event will also offer 3 awards valued at $1000 each! These will be for the “Overall Written Champion”, the “Overall Performance Champion” and the “Overall Grand Champion” (best combined score over both the written & performance sections). In fact 1 single competitor took away over $2500 worth of prizemoney last year alone! You’ve got to be in it to win it as they say!

In the Performance Competition Championship sections poets showcase their skills over a range of subject matter including Classical, Modern, Original Serious & Original Comedy (males & females are judged separately in these sections). There will also be Yarnspinning & Novice competitions (males & females judged together).

Friday night’s competitions kick off with our ‘Man from Snowy River Recitation’ section where 3 pre-selected poets grapple for the title of ‘Best Recitation’ of Banjo’s classic piece. The action is fast and furious to take out this coveted title! There’s plenty of opportunity for ‘Walk-Ups’ as well. Join us for our Thursday night session and our Friday ‘Anzac Concert’ as well as our 3 Poets’ Breakfasts hosted by those rascals ‘The Rhymer from Ryde’ & his sidekick Matthew Hollis. Never fear there’ll be time to sit back & relax as well with Simon Dillon & Colin O’Keeffe hosting the ‘Singalong Campfire Sessions’ late into the night on ‘Banjo’s Block’.

Senior Judge & Poetry Convenor Graeme Johnson will be joined by “Featured Poets” Peter Mace, Geoffrey W. Graham, The Rhymer from Ryde & Tim Sheed, who will also assist him on the various judging panels as well.

Due to time restrictions imposed by the festival programme a strict limit of 12 individual entries in each male & female division of each performance section will be imposed. It is the responsibility of each contestant to ensure that their entries are placed early to avoid disappointment. Entries close 27th Feb, 2026.

Further information and Entry forms are now available here.

Tamworth Country Music Festival highlights

Longyard Bush Poet’s Breakfast 2026

Well! I really don’t know what to say! Just when I think that Bush Poetry may be slowing down, we suddenly find that our audiences are still growing! In the words of my employer here at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, “Yours is the only show amongst our four Hotels that keeps growing and evolving and leaving us unsure of just how far you can take this beast”.

For the twentieth year straight, I have had the wonderful privelage to showcase most of our finest Bush Poets, Storytellers and Balladists at one of Tamworth’s most iconic venues. A tradition built on the back of the early work of Jim Haynes and Frank Daniel, I was tasked with keeping the Poets’ Breakfasts going, and am very proud that the artists I book each year keep taking these shows to a new level.

From our foundation artists, such as Marco Gliori, Ray Essery, Murray Hartin, Gery Fogarty and Co. and the addition of our Backyard Balladeer, Errol Gray, it gave us the nucleus to add such wonderful and popular performers like Bill Kearns, Peter Capp, Rhonda Tallnash, Brad Maclean, Alan Glover, Jeff Brawn etc.

Add to that supplying a springboard for poets who find it hard to get a start at our big festivals now there is no competition nor walk-up opportunities, we can provide a platform for such poets as Joey and Bianca Reedy, Tony Caswell, Gerry Mannion, Maggie Swain-Daly and many others over past and future years.

It has become one of the “Must See” shows of the Tamworth Country Music Festival and should make all or Bush Poetry Family proud that our genre and art of Aussie Storytelling is one of the strongest shows going around. And on top of that we do it eight times! Most shows would be proud of having an audience once, yet the Longyard Poets’ Breakfast manages to do it over eight days of the festival and with a totally new show each day!

Such is the popularity and professionalism of the artists that make up the troupe each year combined with the professional attitude and organisation of The Pub Group, one of Tamworth’s strongest promoter of entertainment, to stand behind us, promote us and have faith every day, every year, that what we do will continue not just to fill their venue, but to entertain the audience to the point that they keep returning, some of them every day.

As I said, it’s a privilege I have been blessed with due to all the hard work of Bush Poets and Bush Poetry shows that came before me and laid the foundations to keep Bush Poetry and Story Telling as a major part of Australia’s premier Country Music Festival!

Neil McArthur
Luckiest Bugger In The World.

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West Tamworth Bowlo Bush Poets’ Breakfast 2026

Another Tamworth Country Music Festival done and dusted, with West Tamworth Bowlo Bush Poets’ Breakfast Show proving popular once again with visitors and locals alike.

Drawing good audience numbers daily, we had a few full houses, proving that Bush Poetry is still alive and kicking. Word of mouth still seems to be the best option in attracting audiences.

Many visitors told us that they had never been to such a show, and truly loved the variety of our performances, the humour, the banter, the music and the storytelling.

Thank you to all of our performers who did us proud and made it happen, namely Ray Essery, Bill Kearns, Geoffrey Graham, Greg North, Paddy O’Brien, John Peel and David Melville.

We will be back again next year, bigger, better and wiser.

Come and join us next month for Gloucester’s VERSE IN THE VALLEY FESTIVAL 4th to 7th March with plenty of Poetry and Music, walk-ups & workshops, as well as the NSW Bush Poetry championships. For further information see above.

Entry form here or phone 0417 251 287.
Tom Mcilveen & Susan Ashton.

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Poets’ Dinner at Tamworth Country Music Festsival

Again the Marigold Chinese Resturant played host to the poets at Tamworth during the festival.

Life Membership for Bill Kearns

Bill grew up on a dairy farm on the Coldstream River and went to Gillett’s Ridge School. He went on to work in the Department of Lands for 20 years and then a multitude of jobs before finishing up in the Public Health Department working at Grafton Base Hospital, relieving those on leave.
“They sent me down to Maclean Hospital for a fortnight and the fortnight turned into six years. I was the manager of Support Services and had about 25 staff, before retiring,” he said.
Bill said that he didn’t begin writing poetry, until around 30 years ago.
“I started off by recording a history of what it was like to grow up on a dairy farm in the 1950s and I challenged myself to write it in verse,” Bill said. “I thought if it’s in verse, no one can change it.
“So I picked out all the little things that happened on the farm and I made a poem out of each little incident (about 30 poems) and I made six copies of it and distributed it to the family.
“I eventually started to branch out into writing about other more serious stuff,” Bill said. “I went to a meeting of bush poets, which was held near Urunga, because I wanted to see what other people were writing and to see how mine stacked up.
“I found that I was writing much the same sort of stuff as they were writing.
“I met up with other Australian bush poets and they’re a mad lot. They got hold of me and totally corrupted me. I heard some of the funny things that they were writing, and I was in awe of these people and so I had a go and started focusing on the humour side of it. I found out that I did have a talent for writing comic verse and that’s what I’m mainly known for.” Bill said that his poems don’t have big words and he uses his words to create pictures in people’s minds.
“Everyone’s mind is different, so everyone sees a different picture,” Bill said. “So, what you say has got to be in general enough terms that different types of people will all form their own picture from it – so that’s my strategy in writing for an audience.”

Poetry Performance Workshop viewable online

On Sunday 17 August the ABPA hosted a poetry performance workshop with Mel and Susie (2/3 of the judges for the 2025 National Bush Poetry Championships). The workshop was recorded and can be viewed on the Multimedia page.

Book Launch: A Sense of Place by David Judge

With an eventful, fulfilling and at times turbulent 70+ years behind me, I have accumulated a vast and diverse range of knowledge, skills and experiences to call upon for poetic expression. I’m not sure what prompted me to start writing poetry so late in life, however, it has given me an enduring sense of place and purpose and a fulfilling outlet for artistic creativity. Australian rhyming verse has a rich and vibrant historical affinity with our national identity and seemed to be the most natural way for me to connect with the past in a way that is structured, logical and easy for most people to understand.

We were nomads of the inland as we moved from place to place where I went to many schools and where I loved the open space and although it didn’t seem it was important at the time I am recollecting all those years with stories told in rhyme.



www.davidjudge.au

Past Magazines now online

The historic magazines of the ABPA from its inception in 1994 are now available here. See how we used to look!

See previously featured poets.

See previously featured achievers.