The first poetry spotlight of the year shines on Ali Whitelock’s poem ‘the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship & the consequences thereof’ from her latest collection A Brief Letter to the Sea About a Couple of Things.

Post written by Polly Grant Butler

Michael tells me to write about my cats, but I’m worried I’ll be perceived as a cat lady, still reeling over a comment Maddy recently made after I told her I love riding horses: ‘Ohhh, of course you’re a horse-girl. Makes complete sense.’ What did she mean? I asked my partner for clarification: ‘Do I give off horse-girl vibes?’ ‘Yes,’ he said without hesitation, suggesting I’m someone who would rather be alone with an animal, out in the open wind, than be around other (human) people. (‘You know, the nobody-understands-me-except-for-my-horse type of person.’) Yes, well, I suppose that’s true, but maybe I don’t want to hear it.

Ali Whitelock knows about ‘the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship’. Her poem, aptly titled ‘the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship & the consequences thereof’, explores this very idea. In typical Ali form, the poem is a concrete slab of stream-of-consciousness, in which the speaker’s blunt response is an offence to her partner’s leading question. There is something masochistic in this desire we have to force our partners into a corner, hoping they insult us, hoping we have an excuse to get angry (or is that just me?). 

Yet Ali draws attention to the parallel problem that exists in such arguments. By using the magnifying mirror as metaphor, she interrogates the honesty rather than the question. The suggestions of peeling – the sheets, the simile of a banana – mirror the kind of unpeeling that occurs in an intimate relationship, where typical social conventions are stripped away, and people say what they mean. Actually, there is something quite beautiful about that idea, even in spite of the consequences.

Support Wakefield Press by buying our beautiful books!  Visit our website or contact us on 08 8352 4455 for more information, or to purchase a book (or three!). We can post your purchase to your doorstep!

To keep up to date with our new releases, events and juicy office gossip, subscribe to the Wakefield Weekly here.