AustLit

'In some topoi of poesy lore, it is believed that the first iteration of Homeric oral verse as a material text was woven by women on a loom – deft fingers spinning, immortalising epic tales. In the Odyssey, an abandoned Penelope sits at her loom, creating, then destroying, her tapestries, waiting for her husband Odysseus’ return to Ithaca from his decade-long voyage. Angela Costi reveals a honed, acute awareness of the traditions, epics, journeys, traumas, travails and triumphs that shaped and brought her to write the existential topography that is her latest collection of poetry, An Embroidery of Old Maps and New (Spinifex, 2021). In these pages, the poet is at once Penelope and Odysseus – speaks as weaver and voyager, sufferer and seeker. But here, when the poet takes up the thread, she does not tear; she tenderly and compassionately unwinds and uncovers those stories, people and worlds in which she recognises who, how and why she is, and in so doing, she reconnects, remakes.'  (Introduction)

'“George Mouratidis immortalises the secret histories and lived experiences of the Greek-Australian working class community even as that culture is under threat of erasure from all sides. Mouratidis is a radical witness, a champion of his people. These poems are no dry games of language. This is poetry as beautiful resistance.”' (Publication summary)

'During the "kindled hours" of a single winter's night in his suburban "hermitage" in Melbourne, an elderly Nikos Nomikos is revisited by a searing vision he first had in a faraway place and time. With Noted Transparencies, the ascetic poet traverses worlds, tragedies and loves, more than half a century later, in his pained and joyous struggle to break the spell of the vision which has haunted him all his life.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.