Dimitris Tsaloumas is one of the first Greek Australian poets who identifies as a translingual writer, given the fluent way he translated his and other poets’ works from English to Greek and back the other way. When he merges urban and rustic landscapes and images that seem foreign but also are familiar, he disorientates his readers and leaves them confused as to where Tsaloumas, the poet, is located. The subtle irony that accompanies his lyrical, elegiac tone evokes someone who identifies as a disillusioned exile. He shows in his earlier poems that he longs for his past island home in the Aegean Sea, while in his later ones he shows how he feels trapped in his present reality. ‘The Trap’, one of the final poems in his collection New and Used Poems, verifies such an observation. It reads like the final confession of a deflated warrior coming to terms with his diminishing vitality when he concedes, ‘We’ve lost through visibility’. For him, there is nowhere to hide, as everything is now exposed through his written admission, ‘I’m only passing through […] There's no exit, you’ve known all along […] Your struggle is with the unseen, the beast that never yields’. It is as if he has always known that he belongs nowhere, but is the eternal migrant aware of life's transience, but also someone who valiantly faces ‘the beast’ of his own demons. The conversational, sardonic tone he uses identifies him as a bard, but by including the image of the ancient gladiator, which is an iconic symbol of heroic endeavour, he locates himself as the outspoken visionary who sought fame in his early days but, in his wiser years, has relinquished his dreams and come to terms with his limitations.

Despite such pessimistic reflections on his own life, he remains a keen observer of the everyday, recreating its sounds and describing his interactions with nature and sentient beings. Often, he addresses an elusive ‘you’ in the second person, which may be a living being or a departed soul, and other times he speaks to himself.