Cirrus@Austlit

This article 'is an attempt to give an expository overview of some of the major Greek-Australian poets of the first generation who arrived in Australia in the fifties and the early sixties. They are: Dimitris Tsaloumas (from the island of Leros, arrived in 1952 and settled in Melbourne); Vasso Kalamaras (from Athens, arrived in 1951 and settled in outback Western Australia before moving to Perth in 1960); Yota Krili (from the Peloponnese, arrived in 1959 and settled in Sydney); Dina Amanatides (also from the Peloponnese, arrived in 1958 and settled in Melbourne); and finally, Antigone Kefala (a Greek from Romania who went first to New Zealand in 1951 and finally settled in Sydney in 1960).'

'This essay provides a survey of the poetry of some Asian Australian poets, and does not attempt to be definitive. Diasporic poetics raise more questions than they answer and are just as much about dis-placement as about place, just as much about a 'poetics of uncertainty' as about certainties of style/nation/identity.' (Author's introduction)