honey & salt

2007 
32 pp

ISBN: 9780734037466

AWARDS: Shortlisted for the 2008 Mary Gilmore Award

Angela Costi’s poems are vigorous, sensual and intelligent. It is the stories created in memory and cultural myth that give her poetry its mix of voices and historical reference. Her work is not just multi-cultural poetry, but it is deeply cultural, giving personality, weight and intimacy to the past we must each keep building and restoring as peoples, as families and as individuals. Her work is a celebration of culture and a chronicling of the difficulties and the pain of change forced by migration or by the passing of generations. KEVIN BROPHY

There’s an uncommon daring and energy about Angela Costi’s explorations of family. Far from mere nostalgia, her poems track the black sheep and embrace the falterer among half-understood traditions, as well as those who walk there with assurance. This is a poet who can indulge in fun, the sensations of good food, the luxury of loving memories, rich impressions of childhood - but also, in poems that will not leave the reader, invoking the hardships of generations. JUDITH RODRIGUEZ