An Embroidery of Old Maps and New

I 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.