In this new book you seem to have developed and refined your narrative style, and the poems are a lot shorter and a lot more direct. Would that be reasonable to say?
Yes, there are more short poems in here than in previous collections and I think for all writers the hope is the more we write, the better we get at it, Although a Canadian/American writer David Rakoff says, ‘as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten better at everything else, we all do, but I have not gotten better at writing’. His 2 minute YouTube clip ‘on writing’ is worth looking at:
I feel as though the main progress I’ve made in my writing is that I don’t judge the early drafts of my poems. If they’re bad, I know they’re bad and I don’t fret about that now because as I’ve gotten more experience in writing, I have a bit more faith that I will be able to turn a crappy poem into something less crappy.
The themes which emerge from this new work are, mortality, ageing, fragility, maybe even weakness and those themes are the basis for investigating climate change and relationships. Would that be reasonable to suggest?
The poems in this collection are coming from a place in me that is obviously now older. Since I came into my 50’s I’ve gone through more personally and I’ve made more peace with who I am and how I am in the world. I feel now at this stage in my life I can say what I like. This is not a conscious decision as in, ‘now that I’m 50+ I will only ever speak my truth’. It’s actually just that one day you just notice you worry less about how you and your truths and thoughts will be perceived. You worry less about going to the deli counter and asking the assistant not to give you the dried up slices of ham from the top of the pile. Although these things don’t sound like much, they are massive events in a woman’s life, especially when you’ve spent most of your life keeping your truths to yourself and your mouth shut. I know countless women who say that being in their 50’s is a liberation.
However, in terms of the poems, as I observe what’s going on politically and environmentally around the world, I, like many others, feel a sense of instability, at times, hopelessness, and these fears and doubts bang on the door of my writing. So, if writing is indeed a dance between the conscious and the unconscious, then it stands to reason that my fears and doubts as well as my confidence and my, dare I say, slightly wiser perspective would inform my work. This all sounds a bit intense, but there’s also a lot of laughter in the book. I think humour goes a long way to making these difficult times more bearable. Lately I’ve looked to comedians to better understand the world. They, unlike the political class, tell things like they are, they hold up a mirror to the world and the feet of hatred and fakery to the fire. I heard Billy Connolly say recently, ‘the only people you can trust now are comedians and poets’. I’m with Billy.
The theme of the sea is all the way through the book. Was that a conscious decision?
No, not at all. I think it’s fair to say my writing is intuitive and the themes and connections in my work are never planned. If there are themes and connections they have happened by good accident.
But I was really surprised and quite delighted once I put the collection together, that somehow, organically and unintentionally, the sea was lapping into quite a few of the poems.
Someone recently asked if living by the sea had inspired so many mentions of it in the poems. I hadn’t thought about that and immediately thought that that made sense. But then I remembered I’ve lived by the sea for 10 years now (!), so how would I explain the lack of it in previous collections? Sometimes there are no reasons for anything. Sometimes things just are.
Where to now?
I’m in the process of finalising a manuscript I’ve been working on for the last few years. It’s not poetry, which feels strange and at the same time exhilarating to imagine putting this new work out into the world. I’m also working on a second memoir and of course I’ll always be writing poetry. And I must get into the habit of having a notebook in my pocket at all times.
If you would like to learn more about the work of Ali Whitelock see the following link – www.aliwhitelock.com
