A Brief Letter to the Sea About a Couple of Things

But here's the thing, I have programmed these poems to whisper your name (yes, yours) in the middle of the night, in the same way that a family-sized bar of white chocolate and packets of crinkle-cut chips whisper your name from the dark of the pantry when you're trying to reduce your carbs.

In a collection where things start innocently enough with an ovarian cyst, and where the poet wakes from dreams of sex in Bunnings (in the light bulb aisle if you're wondering), these poems crash land into your soup bowl leaving your fresh white dress drenched in Campbell's cream of tomato.

Ali Whitelock's poems, bold and loud and heartbreaking, run bare-arsed through the shit storm of this world while playing Rachmaninoff's fifth on a piano left out in the rain. They howl and they ache, they hoot and they pine, they curl up with the sea urchins, sing to the starfish, waltz with the seahorses - they sleep with the moon.