Biography

Gabi Cadenhead is a poet and composer living on unceded Gadigal and Wangal land. Their creative practice is one of intersections – between story and sound; between performance and protest; between embodiment, transness and the sacred. They graduated with a Bachelor of Music Studies (Composition) and Bachelor of Arts (English and Studies in Religion) from Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the University of Sydney in 2020.

Gabi’s poetry has been published by Minds Shine Bright, #EnbyLife Journal, Insights Magazine, Sunder Journal and Calanthe Collective. In 2025, the manuscript for their debut collection ‘this body a home’ has been longlisted for Queensland Writers Centre’s Publishable program. Gabi is a winner of the Bread and Butter Poetry Slam and in 2022 they were selected for Express Media’s Toolkits: Poetry program. Alongside writing, Gabi facilitates creative workshops, providing perfectionism-free spaces for participants to embrace writing as a spiritual practice, and enjoys working with other writers as an editor to realise their creative projects.

An Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre, Gabi’s chamber music has been workshopped and performed by the acclaimed musicians of Ensemble Offspring and Sydney Chamber Opera, as well as emerging peers Ensemble MUSE, Quart-Ed and The Judgement of Paris. Most recently, they were commissioned by Divisi Chamber Singers for their Compose Queer x Queerstories collaboration, premiered in Naarm/Melbourne in 2025. Gabi’s music has been performed at Vivid Sydney and Extended Play New Music Festival, and awarded an Honourable Mention in the Flute New Music Consortium’s 2018 Composition Competition. Gabi has also composed for Sydney and Newcastle Youth Orchestras and Gondwana Choirs.

Gabi’s creative practice is integrally interdisciplinary; their poetry often inspires and appears alongside their music, both sung and spoken, and their musical intuition informs the rhythms of their poetry. Gabi is co-founder of sacred arts project Marion St, with whom they’ve released multiple EPs, and they are part of the artist collective at Annandale Creative Arts Centre.

Photo by Henry Paul.