Angela Costi, poet in the spotlight

La Mama Poetica,
showing Grandmother Maroulla’s embroidery

Under the big tree at Heide Museum,
Rabbit launch of ‘Modern Women’ ekphrastic anthology

Reading alongside art exhibitions
Steps Gallery, Carlton

Reading alongside art exhibitions
45 Downstairs, Melbourne

At the Scottish Poetry Library, reading The Heart of the Advocate
with poets published by Seahorse Publications

Angela reads 'Cooling off'

Angela reads 'Philoxenia'

The Heart of the Advocate

Angela Costi… ‘there is so much more to learn’

In 1993 I began to share my poems at poetry readings, and in 1994 I was published in a number of literary journals. So, I’ve been writing, revising, workshopping, reading, submitting, publishing and engaging with poetry for many years, and always with the thought – there is so much more to learn. I remember studying poetry with Alan Wearne at RMIT and I wanted to delve deeper into Ancient Greek mythology and how poets use it. I applied for a travel award with the (former) Australia National Languages and Literacy Board, and in 1995, was able to study Ancient Greek Drama in Greece. This also led me to spend time in Cyprus and to learn as much as I could about my Cypriot ancestry. This experience fuelled the writing for two poetry collections: Honey & Salt (Five Islands Press, 2007) and Lost in Mid-Verse (Owl Publishing, 2014).

In my recent poetry collection, The Heart of the Advocate (Liquid Amber Press, 2025), distilling Cypriot Greek experience and insight is used to explore the larger theme of ‘informal or familial advocacy’.

A suggestion for newer poets (to assist with longevity in this artistic discipline), is to be continuously working with topics and themes that you may need to research. This learning process is exciting and helps to write poems that interconnect and become a collection.

Angela is a judge in the Liquid Amber 2026 Poetry Prize

Angela Costi is the author of six poetry collections, nine produced/commissioned plays and is the co-author of community book, Relocated. She travelled to Japan, with funding by Creative Australia, as part of an international collaboration involving her poetic text A Nest of Cinnamon. She won the University of Canberra’s Health Poetry Prize 2024 and the Katherine Sussanah Prichard Poetry Prize 2022. Her poems have been placed or shortlisted in a number of prizes, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, joanne burns Microlit Award, Tom Collins Poetry Prize, NSW Poetry Prize, Aesthetic Creative Writing Award, Liquid Amber Poetry Prize, Woorilla Prize and MPU International Poetry Prize.