She’s not normal, why can’t she be normal, she makes me feel really uncomfortable…
An empowering collection of poetry from bestselling Cypriot-Australian poet Koraly Dimitriadis, for people who are not normal.
“Koraly Dimitriadis is a poet of the finest balance. She writes with the tenderness of a loving hand and a fist that smashes oppression.” – Tony Birch, bestselling author, White Girl, and Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature.
“I am so obsessed with Koraly. Her work is disarming, emotionally fearless and she sounds like nobody else alive. I will read her poetry forever.” – Hera Lindsay Bird, international, bestselling poet, Pamper Me To Hell And Back
“Dimitriadis’s writing is committed, honest and powerful. She’s fearless and so her stories and words are vital, they are alive.” – Christos Tsiolkas, award-winning author, The Slap
“Smashing the migrant dream…She’s Not Normal is a defiant declaration, an unapologetic celebration of all the ways in which one can be ‘not normal’.” – Alix Normal, Cyprus Mail
More information can be found on the author’s website.
In a large, white-picket dream, a married mother selfishly cries. She has everything she ever wanted – a husband, a house, a business degree, a baby – she is at the pinnacle of the migrant dream. Perhaps she needs to return to her medication, the pills she stopped taking to become pregnant. She was taking them for six years. She wasn’t allowed to move out of home so she married at twenty-two. Now she is thirty, and it’s as if she is looking at her life for the very first time. She is starting to see things. The creativity she had kept buried inside all her life birthed out with her daughter, and now her words are taking on a life of their own.
From the author of the Australian poetry bestseller, Love and F–k Poems, Just Give Me The Pills is yet another brilliant novel-in-verse by Koraly Dimitriadis. It is a story of repression. It is a story of being silenced, and the terror of realising all the choices you’ve ever made are those you were expected to make, and you have no idea who you really are. It is a story of liberation, of rebuilding and finding one’s true self.
“I am so obsessed with Koraly. Her poetry confuses and delights the everloving f–k out of me. When I read it, I feel big question marks and exclamation points spontaneously erupting above my head, which is the only correct emotional response to poetry. Her work is disarming, emotionally fearless and she sounds like nobody else alive. How could you not love someone who made a trailer for her first book while screaming in a wedding dress? I will read her poetry forever.”
—Hera Lindsay Bird
“Just Give Me the Pills is an extraordinary composition – a defiant portrait of untamed domesticity that is at once tender and fierce. This verse narrative traces the intimate triumphs and falls on one woman’s journey from repression to self-realisation and silence to words, writing the domestic and inner space with a brutal honesty that is candid, unashamed and shockingly moving. Dimitriadis urgently speaks her truth in a voice that is brave, daring and uncensored – exposing herself entirely in an extremity of vulnerability and strength. A feminist anthem for social justice and self-love, Just Give Me the Pills teems with sexuality and bristles with rage – a riveting and compulsive read.”
—Bronwyn Lovell
“As an Australian of Greek heritage, I know how there can be a culture of silence around taboo subjects within our community. Sometimes this silence is necessary, to protect us from the wider community’s insults and bigotry, but at other times it is violently imposed on the younger generations to restrict us from breaking out of archaic cultural norms. This kind of silence often feeds into a cycle of past traumas borne out of experiences of war and migration. I’ve always seen Koraly Dimitriades as, above all, a viciously fearless poet – and her new collection, ‘Just Give Me The Pills’ is no exception. For Koraly, a second-generation Cypriot-Australian woman, to openly navigate mental health, sexism, marriage, expectation and motherhood in such a vulnerable and clear way is a priceless moment for Australian writing. It makes me proud not just as a writer to know her, but also as a member of a community that desperately needs more vehemently honest voices like hers” – Luka Lesson
More information can be found on the author’s website.
From high speed sex on the highway to domestic bliss. From kissing the dizzying heights of new love to skinning her knees on the concrete of rejection. From f–king amongst her childhood toys to the agony of letting go on the beach at midnight, Amy plunges into the treacherous yet expansive oceans of romantic love with a heart that will not harden. A heart that will always be ‘wide open’.
This story told through poetry includes Amy’s illustrations.
“Bodossian’s poetry is a constantly surprising delight. She straddles the lines between satire and serious art, sweetness and obscenity, sexiness and gawkiness.”
The Advertiser
“There isn’t a pigeon hole in existence that could possibly hold Amy Bodossian. No warning. No apologies.”
Finger Magazine
“Vulnerable, honest, primal, cosmic, elemental and ultimately unforgettable. Amy reminds you of all the hurt and wonder of being alive.”
Bronwyn Lovell, Winner Adrien Abbott Poetry Prize
Vist the author’s website
Love and F–k Poems by Koraly Dimitriadis is a bestselling poetry book in Australia. It has also been translated into Greek.
Sexually repressed, separated Greek Girl on a rampage. There’s no love here just f–ks. But is she f–king him or fucking herself? A trailblazing story told through poetry of culture, divorce, love and the maddening scurry to find the sexual self.
“Blood, Fire, Love & Passion; scramble! Direct hit.” TT.O.
“Love and Fuck Poems is raw, audacious and courageous. Bravo!”
– Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap.
“Wow. Dimitriadis pulls no punches here. This is armed-missile poetry. You won’t read anything like this in The Monthly.” Kate Holden
“A voice that demands to be heard.” Overland literary journal
“A feminist critique on the conservative expectations that migrant families often place on their daughters.” Neos Kosmos Newspaper
“An emotional self-examination with a hand-mirror.”– AU Review
“An unashamed poetic celebration of one woman’s liberation from the chains of marital convention, sexual repression and cultural obligation.” – Maxine Beneba Clarke, Foreign Soil
More information can be found on the author’s website.