Poet, Angela Costi’s latest collection, The Heart of the Advocate, explores what it means to be an advocate in our world. Starting from the beginning, she reflects on her childhood memories, as an advocate for her Cypriot Greek parents; and relives her school years and the time she spent in the courtroom, exposing at every stage, often the rift between law and justice.
Costi views poetry and writing as forms of advocacy. In The Heart of the Advocate, she told Neos Kosmos that she invests in poems “that walk you from the court’s bench to find a window, where you view the horizon, knowing justice and equity is meant for everyone.”
With the book’s launch taking place in the historic Old Magistrates’ Court—its first-ever book launch—Costi sees this choice of venue as symbolic.
“It’s about reclaiming or restoring my presence in this [court] space and the presence of other women, whether as advocates, as witnesses, as survivors, as victims,” Costi says.
Costi has lived experience of being a private lawyer. She resigned at a young age to practice creative writing- but she says “the five years of my life as a private lawyer are indelible. I was marked, and I’m exploring that in the book”.
“Traditionally, we’re told in society that an advocate is a lawyer, and I’m suggesting in the book that we’re all advocates.
“A really good advocate, needs compassion, empathy, and respect. Advocates need to listen and support the voices of those that need us to.”
She reflects on her heritage and says her parents “who had to leave Cyprus and weren’t given the opportunity of education, did not feel confident to look at the fine print – so I stepped up”.
“It felt natural for me to be an informal advocate. Some of the narrative poems see the challenge of a younger person trying to deal with the fallout of situations that particularly my beautiful Baba, got involved in with documents all the time,” says the advocate poet.
Continuing her natural advocacy, Costi became lawyer but soon found out that she was “dealing with old, outdated law”.
“You’re dealing with injustice.”
One of the first things she was told in law school by a highly regarded lecturer was ‘If you think that law is about justice, walk out the door’.
To be told at the outset that law doesn’t necessarily equate justice is quite sobering to a young person who wants to make a difference, and stand up for the marginalized, she adds. “To see in Court that those who have the wealth, the power, have the better legal team, because they can spend all that time on loopholes to get out of something they did wrong.”
“And I’m reframing that and saying we can all strive for justice and equity being for everyone.. Poetry is an avenue. Writing is an avenue. Words are so powerful.”
Yiannis Ritsos has always influenced her as a writer Costi says.
“He wrote Epitaphios when he saw the picture of a mother grieving her dead son, on the front page of a newspaper.”
It was May 1936, a time when widespread protests rocked Greece. During one rally by striking tobacco workers in Thessaloniki, 12 protesters were killed by the police, among them 25-year-old Tassos Tousis.
“The mother wasn’t given a voice. For many nights, Yannis Ritsos, couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat, and he wrote this very long poem, which got published in the very same newspaper.
“Thousands of people bought the poem, and marched to that poem, and they weren’t necessarily the intellectuals, either. It was this mass protest. He created something through his words. And that inspires me.”
The poet, she believes it is crucial to think beyond oneself. “I know that the poems can come across as personal, but hopefully I’m creating a bigger story through the personal.”
For Costi poetry is a communal experience, not a solitary one. “When we think about the ancient practice of poetry, for example how Sappho used her lyre to perform her poetry, we realise that not much has changed.”
“You understand its power on the page, but you also think about how to convey and share it… Poetry is about the pause and the pace, the rhythm, the beat.
“When I read my poetry to an audience, there are the silences and they say just as much as the words. On the page as well, the absence of words, at times, fills in for the reader what exactly is going on.”
A year after embarking on her creative writing journey, Costi was awarded a travel grant by the Institution of Australian Languages and Literacy Board to attend a Classical Theatre Program in Greece in 1995—an experience that deeply influenced her poetry and playwriting.
“It might take a long time, but you soon realise what really nourishes you, what makes you feel alive. Since 1994, after I submitted the first poem, I consider myself a writer and a poet. That’s when I felt I was being a public poet, engaging with the world and my art.”
Extensive research has been poured into The Heart of the Advocate. “It’s not just a reactive response. I’m not interested in that. It’s based on evidence research, where I have unpacked the law, in such a way that I’m exposing it. There are also poems derived from interviews with lawyers who told me their story.”
Costi loves the process of sharing her work, but ultimately, continuing to write is her true goal. “I don’t want to be a poet that doesn’t move into other spheres, or isn’t challenged. I love learning. Every time, the page and I go on a learning.”
Having spent the last 30 years in the creative space, she believes it is essential for writers to engage with past and contemporary poets, if they want to grow personally, professionally and artistically.
“Poetry is not just an exercise in wit, or in intellectuality. There must be humanity in a poem,” Costi says, recalling the words of First Peoples’ poet Jeanine Leane, whom she deeply respects. “Has it got any heart?”
“And heart is truth, heart is emotion, heart is rigor as well, and a muscle too. Sometimes a poem can show me another way to live.”
The Heart of the Advocate, published by Liquid Amber Press, will be launched by poet Alana Kelsall with reading by Angela Costi, accompanied by Nick Tsiavos on double bass. Other performers include Vardos and guest poet Claire Gaskin.
When: Sunday, 23 March, 2.45 for a 3 pm start
Where: The Old Magistrates’ Court, 377 Russell Street, Melbourne
