Dan Whitlam and a New Iteration of Poetry By Callum Tilley.
As those of us not immune to social media trends will have noticed, everything – and I mean everything – now has a space online. Whilst some might critique this impulse as shallow, the hollowing-out of arts like fashion, literature, and film for likes and online fame, it also means that creatives have new platforms on which to broadcast their work, and this art can find new audiences. Whilst this debate about the use of social media for art might rumble on – does it represent a superficial manifestation of technological capitalism, or a democratising impulse in creativity and the arts? – one man has been using media to broadcast his own art, and it is truly quite remarkable.
Dan Whitlam has been posting videos on Instagram (@danwhitlam) since 2017, and on Spotify since 2021. His work consists of a unique blend of spoken-word poetry, coupled with musical accompaniment that renders his work emotionally touching. Now amassing around 137,000 followers on Instagram (as of March 2024), is his significant following a symptom of the democratisation of the arts through social media? And how is work so uniquely modern, yet steeped in a rich poetic tradition? Is Dan Whitlam the future of poetry?
Firstly, I would argue that Whitlam’s style is novel, but not radically new. Whilst being a pioneer of his art form, he has not invented a new category of literature (if such a thing is possible). Spoken word poetry has a long and rich history, its oral tradition reaching as far back as Homer; and in a more modern context, its influences and iterations include theatre, jazz, and blues music from the early twentieth century. His art is not revolutionary, but perhaps a new iteration of this rich art form for the modern (or post-modern) age.
Arguably, the novelty of Whitlam’s poetry comes from addressing problems unique to his (and our) generation. Perhaps my favourite of his works, ‘Paper People’, is about what could conventionally be described as a break-up. The speaker explains that he doesn’t know if he and his former partner can be friends, because,
“That would mean writing over what we were
Those rose-tinted days
Turning it into something less special
And slightly more mundane.
A lower level of pain –
You no longer want me as your lover
But wanna hold on to my best bits
When your chest hits
The arm of another.
I don’t think we can be friends.”
The emotional distress Whitlam transmits is acutely familiar to anyone who has gone through a break-up in the past. The feeling of having to turn what was a hugely special relationship into something that, whilst no less important is much less intimate, is something that only those with immense emotional strength can manage. The pain of seeing a former lover in the light of friendship, and knowing that you lost something – or wondering about what could have been – is perhaps too strong an emotion to translate into a friendship.
Whitlam effectively captures this emotional turmoil in a uniquely modern way. Whilst conventionally interpreted as a failing relationship, it is never explicitly referred to as such. This ambiguity could refer to the diminishing importance of labels when navigating modern love; poetry has absorbed the ambiguity of post-modern dating. Would it be too much to suppose that Whitlam is describing the emotional fallout after that perilous quasi-relationship-like place, the ‘situationship’?
Take, for example, another piece, published on Instagram. The poem opens,
“Nothing stranger than lovers turned friends.
As you both slowly forget your beginning and
Only remember the end.”
Perhaps the most piercing line comes later; when the couple meet again, as friends,
“Just as strangers with a hidden knowledge
Who have to sadly pretend.
[…]
Where laughter’s not quite as close
But still holds the memory.
Or smiles that aren’t as deep…
But they’re still your remedy.”
In Whitlam’s emotionally sensitive phraseology, the pain of not quite knowing where you’re standing – emotional no-man’s-land – is rendered crystallised. It cuts straight to the buried point of tension, where your complicated feelings and questions about a relationship that cannot be quite defined – that, like Whitlam, avoids labels – and pins it down. The poet won’t let you escape your pain; he expresses it for you. You cannot be friends with someone who was once more than that. You might be friendly, but you either operate on a new plane of relationship – a halfway-point, where you operate as friends but know one another as lovers – or, if too painful, you cut and run. Whitlam leaves it up to us, the audience, to make that choice for ourselves. For him, or his poetry at least, it is too painful.
If Rupi Kaur is the millennial poet, Dan Whitlam is the emotional mouthpiece of Generation Z. He voices our concerns about the instability of relationships, refusing to define them as we often refuse to define our relations to a lover, and gives intense and beautiful words to the complicated and often un-utterable emotions that characterise our feelings for someone who does not necessarily reciprocate in the same way. It’s painful to listen to, emotively read and set to music, but it’s reflective of our post-modern understanding of love.
This framing of our understanding of relationships finds a uniquely modern platform. Shared on Instagram, Tiktok, Spotify, these poems are directly targeted at the generation of people they discuss. This democratisation of his art allows Whitlam to reach everyone – or, anyone with access to the Internet – which is remarkably modern. So, too, is the blurring of the boundary between music and literature, so that this new iteration of spoken word poetry finds a modern setting over low-fi beats.
What is not modern, however, is Whitlam’s discussion of loss. I am struck by the intense sadness that runs through his work, but never at any point do I get the impression that he regrets it. This recalls Tennyson’s famous lines,
“’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
Whilst Whitlam might be communicating intense emotional turmoil, one emotion left off the page (or screen) is regret. Like Tennyson and countless others, whose rich tradition of love poetry Whitlam now continues, there is no sense that we should protect ourselves from these feelings. Before, I argued that his framing of relationships is uniquely modern; his framing of love, however, is definitely not.
Perhaps the only anti-modern thread in Whitlam’s work is the advocation for feeling these emotions; for loving and loving harder, for experiencing these emotions regardless of the potential consequences, because to fail to do so insulates you from one of the most natural aspects of the human experience: heartbreak. Discussed for thousands of years as an almost universal theme in poetry, Whitlam’s work continues this legacy of advocating for the pursuit of love whilst pushing back against the current impulse to not feel and remain emotionally bubble-wrapped. He reframes age-old poetic tropes of love and loss for post-modern contexts and audiences. Despite being intensely modern in his approach and his medium, Whitlam reminds a modern audience that not to love is worse than loving, and losing.
Sources:
Dan Whitlam’s Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/danwhitlam/
Dan Whitlam’s Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/artist/4t4zanmCp0GBomHaX5hXt8?si=j9bMkWsfRKW6QYVj1ywgsA
Dan Whitlam, ‘Paper People’, extract on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/C3p4kyoo77P/
Dan Whitlam, ‘Nothing Stranger’, extract on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/p/C4slEHjovs4/
Dan Whitlam, ‘Paper People’, on Spotify, https://open.spotify.com/album/5ao1mH7SdctA1afS3CtklP?si=RWGyXOrcQ5u7tP5GM4x-Ug
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 27, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45336/in-memoriam-a-h-h-obiit-mdcccxxxiii-27