Liquid Amber Press (2025)
Reviewed by Stephanie Green for StylusLit
With The Heart of the Advocate Angela Costi has given us a new collection of poems that express a passionate sense of justice and the vital importance of speaking out. These are poems that reflect experiences of struggle, survival and resistance, in particular for Melbourne’s Greek-Cypriot community. In part, they tell the story of growing up amidst the volatility, the hurt and anger, of loss and rupture from homeland. They also give insight into the baffling bureaucratic and legal systems that make finding justice difficult, particularly for those subjected to trauma and displacement. The practice of advocacy is central to Costi’s project here as a writer, drawing on her training and experience as a lawyer. The Heart of the Advocate is attractively presented by Liquid Amber Press, with a Cocteau-inspired cover.
The book is divided into four sections that chart the author’s life experience, growing up as the daughter of migrants, becoming a lawyer, then a writer. She begins in section one, ‘From the Womb’ [3-44], with the impact of the Cypriot-Greek war and the diaspora of 1974 that brought so many to Australia. Those that escaped the war carried with them an ancient culture, but could not completely escape their physical and emotional scars. Several of the poems in this first section feature references to Cypriot culture, food, dance, music. In ‘Dancing on Shards: An Affidavit’ [15-17], Costi writes:
We danced holding hands
with Uncle Tákis twirling
a white mantíli
as the music insisted on faster
then slower
After a time of stomping in circles
the musicians gulped their zivanía
to heat their fingers for the ancient tune
to bring man to woman
to seed harvest eat
as one ––
only one couple
knew this dance
Tákis was the boat moving in the flow
and current of his wife’s hips
–– the dignity of their desire
filled our hearts with tears
Forty years later
there is no Tákis next to Chrystálla at the café
With streams of grey hugging her back
and those startling eyes
that built a wall of silence
when he left her that night ––
I halve our galaktoboúreko hoping
she will have more than a nibble [16]
From the second section, ‘Adversarial Practice’ [19-44], Costi broadens her scope to address learning, violence, racism and protest in Australia’s recent history. In these poems, she reflects on family and school experiences, teachers, mentors, and writers who shaped her thinking about relationships, the law and the world, including Kahlil Gibran, Stan Barstow and Elizabeth Kata.
One of the interesting aspects of Costi’s writing is the way she recruits and subverts formalities of the law –– documents, rituals, costumes and settings – to make new poems. An example of this can be found in ‘THIS PAPER IS’ [34], which adopts a cut-up approach using biblical violence to comment on contemporary legal case approaches. Another powerful example is ‘Applying the Law to Work’ [42-43], which reflects a single mother’s circuitous and frustrating attempt to survive organisational rigidity. In one section from this poem [42], Costi writes:
Scenario with dialogue
Joan the phone will be ringing ringing ringing
into the space you’ve abandoned
taking your voice with you
leaving the caller stranded
Linh stranded is my husband’s chair
Joan your chair cannot be filled
Linh my son’s plate cannot be filled
Joan deal with the crumbs
thrown from above
Linh from above
the scattering has stopped
from below I throw
section 19(1)
Joan I throw back
section 19(2)
Equally compelling is the three-poem sequence ‘What to Wear to a Day of ‘Civilized Warfare’ [50-52]. In the third poem, [52], Costi comments sharply on the judgement of sexualisation that can be used as a weapon to diminish professional women:
the year before I was a mere law clerk but with guts to wear
a blue crochet top showing collar bone hauled into
the principal lawyer’s office scolded with unobtrusive
unempathic neutral appearance he closed his eyes
for minutes as I sat seeing a naked woman on a horse
another dressed in man’s doublet & tunic burned
at the stake another trousered among skirted
women told no trousers on women allowed
leading to improperly eroticizing with
shorter skirts bare arms no stockings
designed to distract when the wisp
of true hair escaped the wig
of the female barrister
she was told
His Honour will not
hear you
until you fix
your
wig
Among the most moving poems here is the title piece, ‘The Heart of the Advocate’, which leads section three, F(LAW)ED [45-61]. In this prose poem, Costi captures the terrible crux of a rape case.
With some help she was able to turn her story into an affidavit. However, the story
is fighting to escape the format. The sequencing of events needs to focus on
dates and times. Each and every word uttered, gesture made, sound heard,
visual cue should be documented as if it were an inventory. What did he say to
her, how did he put his body into hers, when did she say No, how did she say No,
did she say No, how long for? His Word. Her Word. His Body. Her Body. Their
Body. No Body. No. Yes. No. And if he did, what were her motives? [46]
As she concludes here, “Betrayal is harder to compensate than rape” [46].
Powerful as these poems are, it is ‘The Trial of ‘the Domestic’, from section four, that will stay longest with me, for its vivid and traumatic account of modern domestic slavery in Australia. This is a layered, moving poetic account of the Supreme Court case of a Tamil woman who was brutally enslaved by a Melbourne family. The case is clearly positioned within its (too often unaccounted) historical context, concluding “One slave’s truth does build on Another’s”.
Costi’s concluding poems in The Heart of the Advocate deal directly with questions of advocacy and protest, as she observes the costumes and superficial formalities of authority and reminds us what can be done to speak up for ourselves and others, even when the law fails. This is writing that sets out to change thought, to recognise humanity as undivided, honouring the lives of women and the value of a kind word. Reading Costi’s poems can make us stronger.