Anna Couani


Anna Couani is a contemporary Australian poet and visual artist.
Anna Couani was born and grew up in Sydney the eldest of four children of Greek heritage medical doctor John Couani and Polish-Welsh heritage medical doctor Stefania Siedlecky. She studied architecture at the University of Sydney, then took an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Technology Sydney. Since the 1970s she has participated in feminist activism, small press publishing and has taught art, English and ESL at secondary schools. In her educational work Couani published NSW Department of Education and Training booklets of worksheets, for example, Writing in the Visual Arts.
Couani became interested in conceptual in the 1970s, which led to her meeting  artists and writers including Robert Kenny, Ken Bolton and Kris Hemensley. Her first collection of poems, Italy, was published in 1977. She was an editor with Ken Bolton for a journal of experimental writing, Magic Sam. She established Sea Cruise Books which published herself, Pamela Brown, Bolton, Kenny, Hemensley and Joanne Burns.
In 1978 Couani helped form the Sydney Women Writers Workshop. In the 1980s Couani experimental writing, including Were all Women Sex Mad? and other stories, The Train, The Harbour Breathes.
Since 2014, she has run The Shop Gallery in Glebe with her husband, sculptor Hilik Mirankar. A concern with marginalised aspects of women's lives runs throughout her writing. The novel The Western Horizon was serialised in HEAT magazine from 1996 to 2000 and is now available online.

Works

Poetry
Edited