Top Poems of the 21st Century: ABC Radio National

‘For me poetry is an extraordinary kind of time machine we can enter and exit at any time.’ ~ Sarah Holland-Batt

In 2025 ABC Radio National will be conducting a national vote and countdown to celebrate the Top 100 books of the last 25 years. The audience will vote for their top books of the 21st Century so far from a carefully curated longlist with internal and external experts across all genres, fiction and non-fiction.

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, host of ABC’s The Bookshelf, 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 the poems that have shone brightest for each of them this century, as well as how the art form has evolved since the year of Y2K and the Sydney Olympics.

Note: this session will be recorded for broadcast on ABC Radio National. Further venue accessibility information here.

Presented with ABC Radio National and the State Library of NSW as part of Poetry Month.