Indrani Perera

poet, publisher & mentor

Author: Indrani Perera

Slamtidote

Slamtidote is a newish poetry gig bringing poetry and spoken word to Naarm. It's a collective that puts on a monthly gig, held in secret locations. Once you've booked your ticket (and there are free options) you have a pass to a fabulous night of poetry, art, food and music.

I read my poem, Notes from Diaspora on Returning 'Home', to the haunting guitar of Bird Girl. It was the first time I've read my poems accompanied by music. It was an incredible experience with Bird Girl improvising the accompanying melody after hearing a line or two of my poem.

As well as the performances during the evening, Slamtidote also published a zine for the event, filled with poetry and art from some incredibly talented poets and artists. I was super chuffed to have one one my poems included in the beautiful chapbook.

The secret venue was gorgeous – festooned with fairy lights and red heart balloons. There was warm food in the Indian Dhaba out the back serving dahl and rice. Plus market stalls with books and art. Something for everyone in fact! Slamtidote is most definitely a great new addition to the poetry scene in Naarm!

June 1, 2025
Phone-A-Poem

I caught the train into town this morning for a flying visit to the Melbourne Writers Festival and to track down the phones scattered throughout the venues for the event. These are no ordinary phones. Not only are they totally retro with that rotary dial that would make you start the painstaking process of phoning again if you dialled the wrong number (eighties kids you know what I'm talking about) they are completely cool because they are filled with poems!

Yes, you read right. Dial a number on one of these babies and you'll hear a poem read by a poet with a connection to regional Victoria. I'm proud to say that you can hear my poem, Far Flung Seeds, on one of these phones! I wrote this poem about spending time at my grandparents' house in Jeparit, in the Wimmera Mallee. The population here is always around four hundred, it's flat and dry and it has a firm place in my heart.

Huge thanks to Red Room Poetry for commissioning my poem for this project, to Izzy Roberts-Orr for adding the awesome soundscape and to the Melbourne Writers festival for hosting these amazing phones!

May 10, 2025
Phone-A-Poem

I'm beyond thrilled to have my poem, Far Flung Seeds, commissioned as part of the Red Room Poetry Phone-a-Poem project! And super excited to have it published, today, on World Poetry Day!

The phones will be appearing at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival from 8-11 May 2025. If you can't make it to the festival you can listen to my poem online.

Phone-a-Poem is supported by the Australian Government’s Arts and Cultural Development Program through the Regional Arts Fund, Regional Arts Victoria and Regional Arts Australia.

March 21, 2025
Australian Poetry Journal

I have been a huge admirer of the Australian Poetry Journal and its editor Jacinta Le Plastrier for a long time. APJ is one of the premier Australian poetry publications. Through their journals and Best of anthologies they publish some of the most exciting poets currently writing in Australia. Every time I receive my beautifully designed copies, I devour them from cover to cover, inhaling all those luscious words.

For about as long, I have been sending in my poems to their open calls, hoping that something resonates with the guest editors who change for every issue.

In late 2022, I attended a Writers Victoria poetry workshop, Desirte in Poetry, facilitated by Ellen van Neeren, who has an incredible voice and gift with words. It was an incredible workshops and inspired several poems.

I was delighted when earlier this year, I was asked by EvN to submit something for the issue on Desire they were guest editing for APJ. I've never been asked by an editor to submit to a journal before!

When found out that my poem, Notes to A Magpie Sitting on a Fence Carolling to the Trees, was being published in APJ Issue 13.2 I felt like I had finally arrived as a poet. Being included in APJ was a dream come true!

Having my poem selected by guest editor Ellen van Neerven for Issue 13.2 Desire of the Australian Poetry Journal was the best Christmas present ever! I'm beyond thrilled to have one of my poems selected by such an incredible poet and included in Australia's premier poetry journal!

December 26, 2024
Haiku in the Hills

Back in August as part of the Sonic Poetry Festival, I attended the Haiku in the Hills poetry workshop facilitated by AJ D’Costa. We met AJ in the Dandenong Botanic Gardens on a crisp winter morning. Luckily for us, the heavens didn’t open as AJ guided us through the gardens, teaching us about haiku and giving us time to write poems. We ended the walk with a delicious picnic on the grass that AJ had packed and carried for us throughout the walk. It was a lovely morning and a beautiful way to experience poetry in collaboration with and connection to landscape and nature.

After the workshop, AJ gathered our poems and put them into this gorgeous zine. I don’t often write haiku so it was wonderful to have a poem included in this collection. One that I am sure I couldn’t have written without AJ’s expert guidance. Thanks AJ for a fabulous poetry workshop and this amazing souvenir of a wonderful morning!

December 11, 2024
Heroine’s Anthology

Stories in own voices and poems from outside the mainstream are especially close to my heart. Which is why it was such an honour to be shortlisted for the Heroine's Anthology Global edition poetry prize.

This prize and subsequent collection features poems from women about women. Heroine's Anthology is a series of poetry collections edited by Dr Sarah Nicholson. Each collection has a distinct theme and this particular edition was for global poetry.

I really wanted to feature poems about famous Sri Lankan poets but from behind the keyboard, the best I could do was find translated poems from our near neighbour, India. My poem, pathika, features lines of poetry from three different Indian poets interspersed with an ode to those poets, written by me. It's the first time I have incorporated poetry from other poets and it was fun to use my love of research to write a poem.

You'll notice that I have deliberately not said 'female' poets. To do so implies that the term 'poet', excludes women. And that women poets are somehow unusual or an aberration when in fact, more women write poetry than men. A fact that isn't often reflected in poems featured in journals, prizes awarded or books published. One day the term poet will encompass the whole spectrum of humanity and all will be given a pen to write their own story.

In the meantime, check out this fabulous anthology for some incredible voices, writing their stories into the pages of our shared herstory.

December 4, 2024
Cosy Games

As much as I love playing to win and the cut-throat tactics of sabotage and bluffing, there are also times when I just want to curl up in the corner with a cup of tea and a gentle game. This list contains some of the games I reach for when I need a nice, warm hug!

Cat Lady

This is one of the first games I can remember buying from a games shop. The girls and I played it at a friend's house and we had so much fun that we just had to own it so we could play it again and again. This was back in the days when we only had one elderly cat who spent most of his timing hiding from noisy children and sleeping in any sunny patches he could find.

Cat Lady is a card drafting game where you collect stray cats. You then have to feed and entertain them with food, toys, catnip and costumes. It comes with a cute little cat meeple and coloured wooden cubes to represent food.

Calico

We are huge fans of cats in this house. Our two tonks, Roxy and Missy, delight us with their antics and funny little meows. So when I came across Calico on Kickstarter during the pandemic, I just had to back it.

In Calico you place tiles onto your player board to create a cosy rug that will entice a cat to come along and curl up on it for a nap. When that happens, you get a cute little cat token to decorate your rug. Each of the cats is based on a sea cat and even has a description of its traits and personality in the rule book. You can also collect buttons for your rug. If it was a real rug, our cat Missy would try and eat the buttons! For some reason, she has a thing for them.

Elevenses

This game is sweet and easy to play. It has cards and cute little sugar cubes to make your tea sweeter. When my girls were little they used to play it with their Nana. It's a perfect game to bridge the generation gap and bring families together. And it was created by an Australian designer!

Gnome Hollow

I adore this tile placement game with its trinket collecting gnomes who build fairy rings and collect mushroom to sell in the pinwheel market. As part of the game, before you place a tile in someone else's fairy ring, you have to politely ask for permission first! Now how cosy is that?

Verdant

We can't have indoor plants because those cats I mentioned earlier nibble on the the leaves until there's nothing left! So the next best thing is to play Verdant which is all about collecting and placing indoor plants so that they have the best light possible. Each plant card has fun facts and information about the plant that you have just selected. Along the way you get to water and fertilise them to make them super verdant. And you also got to collect tokens to decorate your rooms with furniture and pets. I guess you can play any game to win but this one feels like it doesn't matter who wins as the focus is on keeping your plants healthy and creating a beautiful room.

What games do you reach for when you need a sweet afternoon game?

November 28, 2024
Poetry and Tea

After teaching my eco-dyeing workshop in Niddrie on Sunday, I headed to the Beit e'Shai Teahouse and Pop-Up Gallery in Preston for an evening of tea, tunes and poetry.

Shiralee Hood was our wonderful MC. Farhad Bandesh sang songs in Kurdish to Yusuke's improvised guitar. All while Nadine served us drinks and snacks and Tara worked in the kitchen to brew more tea. Rasha Tayeh, a Palestinian herbalist and nutritionist, has created a beautiful space in which to meet new friends and drink tea. Everything about the teahouse feels intentional and beautiful.

There was a green room for the performers where I got to hear the musicians rehearsing and our MC running through her lines.

A green room! How rockstar is that? Having a place to sit with other performers and prepare was amazing. And Rasha bought us her hibiscus tea and snacks from the Vietnamese restaurant next door that came on real plates. It felt so supportive to have a dedicated space for performers to focus on their work before sharing it with an audience. It's the first time I've ever had a green room – I could get used to it!

I performed poems about the diaspora experience and the legacy of my mixed race heritage. I wanted to bring all the facets of my being – the food, the language, the culture and the ways in which they inhabit my mind and body.

I think it was my best performance ever. Rasha created an intimate, safe and welcoming space. And the audience was warm and supportive. I felt at home in the teahouse with this incredible community and my words flowed easily.

I haven't been writing lot of poetry this year. With all that is happening in the world at the moment, writing poetry feels frivolous and like an indulgence. Here I am safe from harm while other people are starving or are being slaughtered. Genocide is happening in Palestine and our leaders are doing nothing. We petition and protest and we march and still our leaders don't listen.

So me performing poetry, what's that about? How's that going to help anyone? These are some of the questions I was wrestling with after I accepted Rasha's invitation to perform at the Sunday Sessions. I said yes because I wanted to support her business and her community by giving my time and performing. But still, what good would it do?

And then I thought, what would I say to someone else if they asked me: 'What is the point of performing/writing poetry if other people are suffering?' And my answer would be 'Your voice is important. What you have to say matters.'

If we can speak, then we should. About whatever it is that we want to share.

It's the only way we'll ever be able to understand each other.

November 20, 2024
Making a Mark

Craft has taken a back seat this year while I have worked on other poetry-related projects (like my Cards for Poets which you can buy in my shop) so it was fabulous to be asked to teach an eco-dyeing workshop. In the way that these things work, I had been thinking about doing some more eco-dyeing for a while. There is something magical about the whole process of foraging for leaves, rolling them into bundles and then cooking them in a pot.

Early Sunday morning, I gathered up all my pots, rusty bits of metal, copper rods and steel cans and took them across town to Niddrie. Niddrie is a super cute suburb with a huge main street, shopping strip with trams running down the centre. Melbourne is so huge – I'm always discovering new places that I didn't even know existed. I think I could live here for the rest of my life and still not know it all. Exciting thought!

We were dyeing at a gorgeous house right next to Steel creek. After I had set up all the materials and put the pots on to boil (it can take a while in my ginormous steel pot) we went for a foraging walk along the creek.

We started out barefoot on the grass where I ran through some sense awakening exercises I learnt as a nature connection mentor with Firekeepers. It's super easy to walk through the world, in our own heads, without noticing the details of our surroundings. I also went through the respectful foraging rules – take from healthy plants, take a small amount, don't take from the first plant you see, only take from plants if there are lots of them. We want the pants to continue to thrive!

Then it was back to the house for the fun of bundling our leaves on wool or heavy duty 300gsm watercolour paper. With eco dyeing, it's all about the leaves and how you place the on the paper. There are so many different options for expressing your creativity and individuality which I love about this particular craft. The leaves you choose, where you please them, the material you put them on and how you tie your bundles.

You can steam or boil your bundles. Steaming gives you a background that is the same colour as your material (in this case wool or paper) with hopefully fabulous leaf prints. Boiling adds colours from the leaves to the water which in turn soaks into the fabric and colours it. You can also choose to add more leaves to the pot. We had three pots on the stove.

And then there's the pots themselves. Aluminium pots brighten your colours, copper pots bring out greens and steel pot don't have an effect. In the small aluminium pot we added some extra purple plum leaves and sticks from my street to get some purple happening. We also added some rusty nails and a horseshoe which darken colours. In the big steel pot went cinerea leaves (for orange) and other gum leaves to make a brown (we ended up with a purple/brown). In the aluminium steamer stack we just added water.

One of the great things about eco-dyeing is that it is different every time because the leaves you choose are little time capsules that reflect that moment in the plant's life – the sunshine, the rain and the soil in which it grew. The water you use has an effect on the result as do all the little decisions you make along the way.

And then after you wait for your bundles to cook, you have the surprise and joy of opening your little gifts to yourself!

The paper bundles all spread out and drying! Did you know that you can iron watercolour paper? Yep, it's true!

So there you have it, another successful eco-dyeing workshop!

November 18, 2024
Australian Games

One of the best things about going to PAX Australia last month was meeting so many Australian games designers. I love supporting local creatives through buying and playing their games but they're not that easy to find. The last time I went into one of the major Australian games shops and asked for a game by an Australian designer they could only point to two different titles (one of which I already owned) so I assumed there just weren't that many Australian games being created. How wrong one person can be!

At PAX there were designers playing games that had already been published and were available for sale as well as prototypes of games by up and coming games designers. I got to play so many great new prototypes from the improv story telling of Heckle Havoc to the memory workout of Coffee Up to the tile drafting and assembly of Flat Packed. All these games felt fresh with new mechanics or twists on old themes.

After meeting so many local designers, I decided to go on a hunt for games by Australian designers and create a list of some of my favourites. If you want a massive list, check this out.

Sushi Go

Phil Walker-Harding is the super talented and successful brain behind many great games including Bärenpark, Cacao, Imhotep and Sushi Go. And these are just his titles that I've played – there are SOOOO many more! Sushi Go is the game we played over and over again when the girls were small. It's super cute set-collecting card game where you have to collect sets of sushi and sometimes use chopsticks.

Harding is so prolific that he has even started up his own games publishing company, Joey Games.

Elevenses

Designed by David Harding, Elevenses is an adorable morning tea themed card game. The gorgeous artwork is reminiscent of the 1920s and the art deco movement. It even comes with little sugar cubes to sweeten your cuppa! This a super cosy game for those raining afternoons the you feel like a bug and something compose to play.

Harding has also designed Matcha and One Zero One.

Fluttering Souls

Almost the first thing I did when I went to PAX 2024 was impulse buy this game because to looked pretty and was less than $20. Created by Joel Lewis, this light two player game was based on the Japanese legend of the White Butterfly.

The game play is pretty simple – you want to collect sets of butterflies from the grid on the table to score the most points. Some of the cards are face down making it trickier and there is a card you can play on to the table to block other players. Each round you win scores you a wooden butterfly. The player with the most butterflies at the end of three rounds is the winner.

Kitsunedo

Kitsunedo was another impulse purchase from PAX 2024, this time late on the last day. I had just been through Ukiyo's fantasy dark room experience and wanted more of this incredible world. The art work is stunning, I got my box signed by the designer and am now regretting not buying the extra player cards!

I haven't had a chance to play the game yet but from what I know it's all about deception and bluffing – prefect for those cut-throat evenings of game play!

Land & Sea

Meeting John Paul, the designer of Land and Sea was a huge highlight of PAX 2024. I even got to play the game with him explaining the rules and telling me about its design and hidden easter eggs on the cards. Tell me that's not cool! Talk about a super geek moment. Of course I just had to go and buy the game and then get it signed. Cos you know, I'm a collector (and I adore the Missy Higgins song of the same name) and huge fan girl!

Land and Sea is a tile placement game with layer on layer on layer. It sounds simple. One player is land and is trying to make the biggest island possible. The other player is sea and is trying to create enormous oceans. But then there are bonus point which can be stolen plus mountain ranges and coral reefs, caravans and ship to spice things up. I bought this game because to was fun to play, beauiftul to look at and I knew it was right up the Lovely G's alley.

Menagerie

This is the game that started it all for our family!

Deisgend by Jindabyne park rangers, Dan Nicholls & Pat Darlington, this is a game of collecting Australian animals. Along the way you learn fun facts about the animals and the habitats they live in. The base game is lots of fun to play with young children although we typically played without the threats and threat management strategies. I feel these cards would work well for older players. There are also many habitat add-ons that you can purchase and they come with more animals cards and a new habitat to add to you existing ones. Packs available including the coral reef and the Australian Alps.

Other games by Australian designers include:

18 Holes by Ryan Boucher

Blood on the Clock Tower by Steven Medway

Elysium by Matthew Duncan

Fair and Unfair by Joel Finch

Skyward by Brendan Evans

Trust Me I'm A Doctor by Jack Ford Morgan

After attending PAX Australia, I managed to double my collection of games by Australian designers! And now I'm more passionate than ever about supporting our great wealth of local talent. I can't wait to go to PAX again next year and see who else I can discover!

Next time you're in local games store, ask them for one of these Australian designed titles so we can get more games by locals on the shelves and in the hands of players!

November 12, 2024