The Heart of the Advocate

Angela Costi's new collection The Heart of the Advocate is fierce, compassionate, and principled. In these poems, Costi scrutinises childhood memories and legal history, revealing the rift between law and justice. These poems are alive with detail, and intimate, but also alert to intersecting kinds of violence: sexist, racist, class-based, legalistic and bureaucratic. This is an exemplar of poetic advocacy. Lisa Gorton

Angela Costi is a witness, advocate and storyteller in this powerful collection that attends closely to the needs of others and gives voice to their experiences of injustice. With their moving narratives and precise images, these poems locate the poetic pulse in unlikely places - ships, backrooms, solicitors' offices and legislation. Costi traces the emergence of a committed and compassionate advocate from the womb to the schoolyard to the courtroom to the page, revealing that poetry, too, can be a potent form of justice. Simone King