Readings from Angela Costi (The Heart of the Advocate), Anne Elvey (Intents) and EA Gleeson (The Deepest Thing) on telling a difficult story with poetry.

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ANGELA COSTI is known as Aggeliki Kosti among the Cypriot-Greek diaspora. She is a graduate of both Law and Professional Writing and Editing, and works as a lawyer and community artist with a focus on social justice issues. Since 1994, Angela’s poetry, stories, plays, essays and reviews, with travel and migration at their heart, have been widely published nationally and internationally. In 1995, she received an award from the Australian National Languages and Literacy Board to study Ancient Drama in Greece. In 2009, she travelled to Japan with support from the Australian Council to work on an international collaboration with the Stringraphy Ensemble. In Cyprus, Angela’s maternal grandmother skilfully created the renowned Lefkarathika embroidery. However, both her parents left Cyprus for Australia to escape poverty, civil unrest and imminent war. These experiences have inspired An Embroidery of Old Maps and New, her fifth poetry collection.

ANNE ELVEY is a poet, editor and researcher, living on unceded Bunurong Country. Her recent poetry collections are Leaf (Liquid Amber Press, 2022), shortlisted in the 2023 ASLE-UKI Book Prize for the best work of creative writing with an ecological theme, and Obligations of voice (Recent Work Press, 2021). Intents is forthcoming from Liquid Amber Press in April 2025. Kin (Five Islands Press, 2014) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2015. She was international winner of the Overleaf Chapbook Manuscript Award 2015. Anne is co-author of Intatto/Intact (La Vita Felice, 2017), an Italian-English collection of ecopoetry with Massimo D’Arcangelo and Helen Moore, and translators Francesca Cosi, Alessandra Repossi and Todd Protnowitz. She was inaugural managing editor of Plumwood Mountain journal until 2020. Her scholarly book Reading with Earth: Contributions of the New Materialism to an Ecological Feminist Hermeneutics (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022) was winner of the inaugural ANZATS Book Prize for an Established Scholar.

EA Gleeson lives and writes near the Campaspe River in Kyneton within the Macedon Ranges – Taungurung Country, Australia. Poetry is her great love. Her three poetry books In between the dancing, Maisie and the Black Cat Band and Small Acts of Purpose were published by Interactive Press. Anne’s essays and articles have been published in the major Australian newspapers, literary journals, special interest journals and on-line publications.