The Telling

By Julia Webb

The Telling by Julia Webb is a distinctive and acutely-observed collection of poems that unravel the intricacies at the heart of human relationships – an insistent, quietly fierce tour de force from this Forward Prize commended poet. Moving and dark, we uncover the things that go unspoken between people despite their closeness.
In turning her forensic focus on what makes us human, and in particular what it is that glues us together or causes us to come apart, Julia Webb's poetry examines the wreckage of complex lives to understand where the fault lines and fractures lie. What are the stories that construct our families and relationships, and who gets to tell them? Can we trust the stories we inherit, and what happens when we recover the right to tell things for ourselves? These compelling, taut poems crackle with the electricity of the untold – of flawed humans and hurt, of daring and being, of reclaiming and persisting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: May 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781913437374

Julia Webb

Julia Webb is a writer, artist, poetry tutor and editor based in Norwich. Her first two collections: Bird Sisters (2016) and Threat (2019) were also published by Nine Arches Press. Her work has been published widely in UK journals and anthologies. In 2011 she won the Poetry Society’s Stanza competition and in 2018 she won the Battered Moons poetry competition. Her poem ‘Sisters’ was highly commended in the 2016 Forward Prize.

Book preview

Crash Site

We remember only vaguely now the wreckage of our mother –

her damaged fuselage suspended precariously

between two broken pine trees;

how carefully one had to tread

so as not to bring the whole thing down,

and everywhere the stink of spilled aviation fuel –

at least in the beginning.

We never did find that black box

so it was always unclear exactly what had happened,

and each survivor told a different story.

But the wreckage was there for all to see –

seats and belongings scattered far and wide,

things broken open,

life jackets snagged on jagged branches.

Though our mother’s windows

had popped out with the pressure,

she sometimes talked affectionately about the plummet,

but swore she could remember nothing

of our other life, before take-off.

Our first memory was the screaming of metal

and the silence which came after.

We weren’t as connected as we could have been

some days the distance between us

became whole galaxies, oceans, even –

our voices were garbled

as if we were speaking underwater,

fishes swam from our mouths.

I did not speak shark and you did not speak whale

but we each had harpoons

and we weren’t afraid to use them.

Other times heavenly choirs hovered above us,

the distance rolled itself up like a rug.

Flowers fell from our mouths as we spoke,

and precious stones, fancy cakes,

delicate sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

This is real connection, you once said,

and your words smelt like that yellow rose

in our old garden, and tasted like blackberries.

The Telling

My mother was crying on the phone

oh my poor, poor boy, she said, my poor, poor boy

and there were all those

miles between us

and no car to drive there

and no money for the train

and my son in school oblivious

and nothing I could do but stay on the phone

with the miles between us

eaten up with her grief and my misery

and the guilt we don’t speak of

and my father’s words piling up behind me

shoving me over the precipice –

you tell her, you tell her, I can’t face it

and me just a kid for a minute

but sucking myself back to adult

picking up the phone –

standing there, a rabbit in the headlights

inviting her grief to mow me down.

Since she died bits of me are missing

I still look like a clock

but my hands are permanently stuck

on the wrong time mid afternoon

or maybe the middle of the night,

and that telephone inside me

rang so long and hard

they had to cut it out.

There are no dreams on the operating table

I can tell you, not even a slow falling darkness,

just a nothing – like a box open and shut.

Later they pointed lasers at my eye sockets

to stop my head