Welcome to Issue 7! We missed you. This Issue we’re excited to bring you a reciprocal interview between Anna Couani and Peter Lyssiotis. The long-term friends have now interviewed each other twice in Kalliope X, but this time the roles are reversed and it’s Peter Lyssiotis asking the questions. Anna Couani provides a sweeping account of her many achievements in life as a writer, visual artist, musician and teacher, providing frank insights into her creative process, inspirations and philosophy.

Also in this Issue, two prose pieces explore male camaraderie from a female perspective, and in very different ways. In ‘Zavier and Sebastian’, Sue Hall Pyke weaves brilliant Australian vernacular through a vivid depiction of an AFL match touched by the divine. Meanwhile, Natalie Vella in ‘Tin Hares’ explores a male migrant experience stretching from a Melbourne Holden car factory in Dandenong to a nursing home.

Our featured poet, Natalie Damjanovich-Napoleon, continues with her groundbreaking erasure poems and cut-ups, which reclaim the archives for the ‘forgotten’ Croatian and Yugoslav migrants. We are honoured to be in partnership with PEN Melbourne, and able to share the clear-eyed, stirring poetry of Amanda Socorro Lacaba Echanis, who remains illegally incarcerated in the Philippines. Amanda’s poems are translated from Filipino by poet, editor and publisher, Faye Cura. In addition, we have a dazzling cast of multi-lingual/trans-lingual poets. In Farsi, Masoud Irani draws us into the ‘tale of hands’ and why trees are ‘mourning for [their] dead leaves’, as well as a collaborative English translation with Josephine Scicluna.

Tineke van der Eecken braids Dutch and English into the life of her mother’s past diplomatic and activist work with her riveting narrative and lyricism. Elif Sezan gifts us a poem of haunting magnitude. Charles D’Anastasi provides a pantoum to devour in our dreams. Helen Koukoutsis ignites our connection with our mothers and their unwavering tenets. And Caterina Mastroianni leads us to the classroom where all roles are jostled and rattled by ‘Censorship’.

In book reviews, Thabani Tshuma’s poetic expertise guides us through When I open the shop, the convention-defying debut novel by writer, chef and poet romesh dissanayake. Our own Angela Costi introduces The Unsent Condolences, a crucial new book of poetry from Abdul Samad Haidari, which merges lyricism with his journalistic background to uncover survival, grief, and resistance. Last but certainly not least, Lia Dewey Morgan reviews The Maker of Garlands, Pooja Mittal Biswas’s fifth poetry collection that ferociously interrogates the personal and cultural pluriverse.

In Among the Chaos, experimental visual artist and poet Sandy Caldow brings us into one of her writing spaces. In this studio are some of the sculptures, which have inspired her recent companion books of poetry and visual art.

Enjoy this issue and check out our social media pages for information about our next fundraiser on 30 November 2025 at Capers, 843 High St Thornbury.

Kalliope X