Controversial Cypriot-Australian poet Koraly Dimitriadis, who was recently runner up in the Eyeland Book awards in Greece for her poetry book, Just Give Me The Pills, will launch her fourth poetry book, That’s What They Do, at the beginning of February.
Dimitriadis, who has won prizes internationally for her poetry including American Book Fest, explores through the poetic form the different ways a person can experience abuse.
“Abuse can come in all sorts of ways, and sometimes it is not in the form that we expect,” Dimitriadis says. “Often in those cases it has us wondering, “am I imagining this? Am I to blame?” No, you are not!”
Through this collection, Dimitriadis explores emotional abuse in friendships, romantic relationships, family dynamics, abuse that governments and society inflict, and also, more topically, abuse she has suffered in the Australian arts sector.
Dimitriadis explains that her frequent travel has largely been driven by feeling marginalised within Australian literary circles, saying she was sidelined and excluded in ways that made it difficult to continue working locally. As a result, she sought opportunities overseas and found meaningful support within the Cypriot arts sector, which helped sustain both her practice and resilience during a challenging period.
She notes that recent controversies, such as the removal of Palestinian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide Writers Week, have brought broader attention to how exclusion can operate within the literary world, whether through external pressures or internal dynamics.
While acknowledging the toll her experience has taken on her mental health and career, she emphasises her determination to continue speaking openly about the issue and to persist in her work.
Other topics explored in the collection is violence against women, including the recent Tom Silvagni case. One of her poems, included in the book, amassed over 200,000 views to date on her social media.
“I do write a lot of what I like to call “opinion poetry”. Rather than writing opinion articles, like I have in the past for the media, I write a poem because it allows me more freedom to say what I want to say, because the media has become so much more censored,” she says.
Dimitriadis has had her commentary published extensively throughout Australia, including international publications in The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Independent (UK) and The Guardian.
That’s What They Do will be launched officially on Sunday, February 8 at 3pm at the popular Cypriot restaurant and events space, Capers in Thornbury. It will be launched by lawyer, mediator and musician Emily Highfield who will be in-conversation with Dimitriadis and will also perform a few songs acoustically in Greek and English. Dimitriadis will also perform her trailblazing poetry. Bookings are essential.
