Description
Book SynopsisI can see how I carry Yiayia’s war in the ample dunes of my belly, the moment she smelt the guns, she pinched the candle’s wick, gathered the startled shadows of her children, flung my baby-mother onto her back and sprinted towards the neutral moon— Migration and the memories of women’s traditions are woven throughout these poems. Angela Costi brings the world of Cyprus to Australia. Her mother encounters animosity on Melbourne’s trams as Angela learns to thread words in ways that echo her grandmother’s embroidery. Here are poems that sing their way across the seas and map histories.
Trade ReviewThese powerful, poignant poems embody the experience of generations of women, the dignity of their labour, their affirmation of life as a journey into uncharted realms, where they must adapt their skills to sustain their children in an unfamiliar culture: a challenge to be embraced wholeheartedly, bodily. The thread of a unique Greek-Cypriot embroidery tradition morphs into the thread of language celebrating the continuity and manifold richness of life in fluid, intricate patterns of ancestry and migration, the eloquence of words, hands, thread. —Jena Woodhouse. News from the Village: Travels in Rural Greece Angela Costi threads the colours and textures of heart and humanity through fabric drawn across geographies. Cut from one cloth, she stitches complexity of journey, place and people. Now and then. Anchored and looping. Her yarn and needle weave a taut finely detailed tapestry. This braid of head, heart and hand is to be treasured, passed on, a witness to events that must not be disappeared. —berni m. janssen, author between wind and water (in a vulnerable place)
Table of ContentsFrom Bondi to Kyrenia Arrival Refugee Aerobics Land Mines Heavy Knock Knock Kostaki’s Harvest Woes Looping the Waves Making Lace Night Shift Crescendo The Weed Eaters The Good Citizens of Melbourne Incident in Aisle 5 Kostaki’s signature Fatigue Inner sense An Extra-curricular Assessment The English Missionary Kinaesthetic Grace Coburg When Coburg Lake became a Kyrenia Wedding When the Hill’s Hoist became the Wishing-tree Outskirts The Quadrangle of Dreams To Identify the Apostate Goddess Nike Somewhere Overseas The Colour Chase Shanker Hotel, New Delhi, 1991 ‘How to Drape a Saree' Bhagwanlila Exports, Varanasi, India The Summit of Choice Travel with a coward’s heart Abduction Calling Good Night Frontline Γιαγιά is swimming in my KeepCup Australia visits Minnesota Regulation The Daily Commute Father Homework The Guest Shelter After Dinner Diagnoses Remission 2020 Ocean View Abundance Supplementary notes Acknowledgements
