"I want poetry to feel alive again"

Last year, we presented an event called Future Laureates in partnership with the National Young Writers' Festival. In this speculative event, the 2025 Youth Poetry Ambassadors were asked to respond to the prompt, “If you were Poet Laureate for a day, what would you do?”, delivering their first (fictional) address as Australia’s next national Laureate.

Below is a version of Youth Ambassador Zafty's speech.

It still kind of feels strange hearing the term poet laureate next to ‘Zafty’ because when I first started writing, I really wasn't chasing awards or titles. To be honest, it was just me trying to survive my own thoughts, and back then, poetry wasn't something that I could find in books, at least the books I was reading.

It was something that found me in the deafeningly quiet moments, the walks home when my head was too loud, and I needed something else to think about In the silence between my mother praying for me, and dad playing some random 90s music. It was a mirror that I could hold to myself to help me shape the type of man that I wanted to be.

And I didn't write poetry or start writing at all because I thought I was special. I wrote because I needed to make sense of a world that didn't feel like there was space for me in it. Because when you grow up feeling unseen, words can help pave a path for you to prove that you are here, that there is a space, and that you are filling it with something.

I think that's why I've always thought of myself as an explorer. Not of land, but of emotions. I feel like if I didn't recognise the boy that I saw in old photos, I might as well go out and try to find who he is. Every poem, every verse, every song that I've ever written feels like wandering through my own heart, trying to find. A view. A view that's hopefully worth it. And when I finish this journey, if I ever manage to finish this journey, I want to be able to say, “Yes. THIS is who I am.”

Furthermore, when I hear poet laureate, I don't think about tradition, even though it's like a really fancy word; it doesn't feel old to me. I think about the possibility, I think about other kids sitting in their rooms, writing lyrics on a cracked phone, or writing a song in the margins of their homework. Not knowing that what they're doing is poetry, that it’s art and that it’s worth something. That their stories, their slang, their chaos is part of a national language.

And if this role means anything to me, it's not about being the voice of a country per se. It's about listening to the voices that are already there, the quiet ones, the angry ones, the hopeful ones, and holding the same mirrors that I was able to hold to myself to them. I want poetry to feel alive again.

Like, I don't want it to still be locked in classrooms, read only in English class in the form of Shakespeare, because honestly, these kids are way cooler than Shakespeare. I want it to be shouted, sung, whispered; in whatever form that the people writing it feel it. I want this program to be able to tell anybody who feels like they don’t belong that their voice matters, even when it shakes.

Especially when it shakes. Rah.