An Embroidery of Old Maps and New

POETRY READINGS FROM AN EMBROIDERY OF OLD MAPS AND NEW BOOK LAUNCH

Reviews

Costi’s work is indeed a tapestry that weaves together complex issues while finding ways to highlight a shared humanity. If you want to be awed by poetic artistry, you should read this book. Costi is a master of her craft and uses it to deftly and quietly address societal issues that need attention. Read the full review here.

— Gemma White, Westerly

There is a majesty about Angela Costi’s new poetry collection, An Embroidery of Old Maps and New, in a weave of words that elevates the simple into an artful epic of beauty, dignity and a persistent quest for justice. At the heart of this collection is the question of legacy – a dedication to her mother Eleni and grandmothers who are each background and foreground, as practitioners of the Cypriot lace-making tradition Lefkarathika, to a detailed exploration of the human condition. The collection poses the question of how does a woman poet immersed in two worlds, as the Greek-Cypriot ‘migrant daughter’, divided by hemispheres lay her ideas about the world as witness, inheritor and storyteller? Read the full review here.

—Vasilka Pateras in Rochford Street Review

It is difficult to overstate the importance of Costi’s poetry. Read the full review here.

—Alison Clifton, StylusLit

These powerful, poignant poems embody the experience of generations of women, the dignity of their labour, their affirmation of life as a journey into uncharted realms, where they must adapt their skills to sustain their children in an unfamiliar culture: a challenge to be embraced wholeheartedly, bodily. The thread of a unique Greek-Cypriot embroidery tradition morphs into the thread of language celebrating the continuity and manifold richness of life in fluid, intricate patterns of ancestry and migration, the eloquence of words, hands, thread.

—Jena Woodhouse, News from the Village: Travels in Rural Greece

Angela Costi threads the colours and textures of heart and humanity through fabric drawn across geographies. Cut from one cloth, she stitches complexity of journey, place and people. Now and then. Anchored and looping. Her yarn and needle weave a taut finely detailed tapestry. This braid of head, heart and hand is to be treasured, passed on, a witness to events that must not be disappeared.

—berni m. janssen, author of between wind and water (in a vulnerable place)

An Embroidery of Old Maps and New explores the liminal space between inherited culture, language and traditions and life in a new country where those inheritances are woven into the fabric of a new traditions and cultures. Angela Costi’s poems are a quiet celebration of small, but important steps taken, while not shying away from the reasons that prompted this new life. Readers get to see both the intricacy and delicacy of the top stitches as well as the thumb pricks and calloused hands that made them. Read the full review here.

— Emma Lee, poet

FIVE STARS. An Embroidery of Old Maps and New is as delicately woven a collection of poetry as its title suggests. Costi unpicks the realities of the migrant experience, reaching deep into her rich heritage of the Cypriot lace-making traditions of her mother and grandmothers as well as exploring the inevitable tensions that emerge in living a life spanning two very different cultures, as the title of the opening poem demonstrates: ‘From Bondi to Kyrenia’.
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Costi’s latest collection is arguably her most impressive yet, and amply rewards multiple readings. It is a layered, nuanced work which delights our senses while probing our assumptions and conscience, and the atmosphere it weaves stays with us long after we have closed its covers.

— Denise O’Hagan, poet and editor, GoodReads Review

Angela Costi's book is so beautiful, so intricate, so alive in its poetry, I recommend buying and reading immediately. Here is a weaving of history, personal challenge, immigration, and working life, at it's best. Narrative with the best of poetic skill. Image used wisely and effectively.

— Robyn Rowland, poet, GoodReads Review