Reviewed by Magdalena Ball
The Heart of the Advocate
By Angela Costi
Liquid Amber Press
ISBN 978-1-7636567-2-7, softcover, 100 pages
I used to think that legal language was the opposite of poetic language. In her latest poetry book, The Heart of the Advocate, Angela Costi shows that this dichotomy is a false one. Drawing on her experience as a legal advocate, Costi combines legal tropes with poetic techniques to powerful effect, reclaiming what she calls “fossilised legalese” in ways that concatenates the poetic themes of memory, migration, and nostalgia with activism, injustices, and trauma. The title is a play on the 1964 nonfiction book The Art of the Advocate by Richard Du Cann, which was given to Costi by her legal mentor. Du Cann’s book, referenced several times in The Heart of the Advocate, focuses on cross examination and witness handling and Costi explores notions of responsibility, advocacy, and the way in which the judicial process can flatten or even diminish story and how poetry can go deeper.
The book opens with a series of poems that trace the difficult migration of Costi’s grandparents from Cyprus in the late 1950s to escape the civil unrest and looming war during British colonisation. These poems take on a variety of perspectives, sometimes utilising the structure and sonics of an ancient Greek choral format with a call and response point of view like strophe and antistrophe, for a mother and daughter, a grandfather and grandchild or migrant and anthropomorphised ship en route:
I was nothing but bones. I was thinking
I have to eat or I will die, my suitcase
was stocked by my mama with lountza,
elies, soutzoukos, loukaniko
my body gave it to the seaThey had me travel the harshest route
to teach the young boy and others
from ‘dark lands’ how to plead like
well-behaved dogs, they made him stop
sneaking food from his suitcase by mopping
the vomit and excrement from my cells (“Writs of Passage I”)
The use of anthropomorphism continues in the book with an animated old passport and later, clothing worn by Lindy Chamberlain and her daughter Azaria, including the famous matinee jacket: “only she knew/I would return.”. These objects bear witness, speaking of suppressed truths and other ways of knowing. Costi provides a wide range of sensual details from her Cypriot Greek background: food, dialect, mythologies, mannerisms, artefacts, and customs:
Bedroom three was cleaned by Mama, the double
bed covered by a treasured Lefkara embroidery
to comfort Phito, Roulla, Takis, Andriani, ChrystallaMy parents brought the ancient tradition of philo-
xenia, befriend the stranger, welcome the weary
with heart, no need for ‘tolerance’ or ‘cultural duty’ (“Philoxenia”)
Philoxenia, the Greek tradition of hospitality/treating strangers as friends, is an underlying principle of The Heart of the Advocate providing a motif that Costi returns to repeatedly. This tradition is built around empathy as a counter to injustice, the real “heart” of advocacy. Costi moves through her own journey as family advocate, reasonably common for children of immigrant families, including the Cypriot refugees their family took in when she was growing up. Costi grew up in a household speaking Greek, Cypriot and English and this multilingual perspective is particularly evident in these poems that utilise sound techniques like sibilance, rhythm, and breath to create a sense of these links between culture:
My attempt at Cypriot dialect tumbles
between slurps of tsai
while she forages among her words of English (“Dancing on Shards: An Affadavit”)
This first part of the book is mostly memoir, with pieces that explore injustices at school including corporal punishment, only banned in Victoria in 1985 (they were one of the earlier states), teacher betrayals, competitive friends, and the long and arduous journey to legal qualification. As the book progresses, it is clear that the subjects extend well beyond memoir, giving voice to the victims and survivors that the book is dedicated to. One of those survivors is Vincent Shin, one of the first school lawyers who was profiled on Australian Story, a clear example of an advocate of the heart:
The second your father threw your mother
into a bush of thorns & you held her gashed & bloody
you were an advocate how many punches to the face does it take
to compel the study of Acts that don’t blame your mum
or you for being too small scared childlike (“Survivor”)
The second section, “Adversarial Practice” contains a series of poems that explore ways in which the Equal Opportunity Act of 2010 have been contravened from denying peple entry to nightclubs, distrimination based on name at job interviews, and refusing flexible work practices. The language used is often legal and wry, incorporating staccato rhythms, legal clauses and references, bullet points, and columns in order to convey a situation.
The third section, “F(LAW)ED”, opens with the title poem, a powerful case of abuse in which legal structures prove to be an inadequate framework with which to contain such trauma:
When the story first arrived in my office, it was pent up with
years of outrage and guilt. It was the feral cat, the wild horse,
the charred koala. Taming, containing, coaxing the stray
towards the malignant law is difficult when the client is
clinging to hope. And it’s painful when my heart whimpers
with the strain of upholding a library of outdated words.
The traumas that follow are also built around cases involving rape, often involving italicised judgements, or shapes that funnel into a denouement that is represents the way female victims are objectified in a courtroom. Costi creates strong parallels with Greek Mythology, evoking Europa, Callisto, Demeter and Leda as examples of ‘lack of consent’ and Prometheus as an example of power and reclamation, as in ‘Chain-up’, an exploration of feminist activist Zelda D’Aprano, who fought for better conditions and equal pay for women in Melbourne, chaining herself to the Commonwealth Building:
Prometheus was chained to the mountain
while Zelda chained herself
to a mountainous building
both of them daring to seal
a necessity —
equality is an ancient fire —-
she too was punished by gods
using batons to bash women
There are many poems in this collection that explore the artists, activists, poets and lawyers who have, in the words of Costi, salvaged advocacy through Philoxenia, a focus on the greater good. The Heart of the Advocate is a fascinating and assured collection that feels very relevant to the modern world, even as it works with history, memory and the traumas of the past.