An early recording of of one of Mel White’s best known poems, The New Mythology, recorded soon after it was written.

The New Mythology is also the title for Mel’s collection of poetry. Here are some of her thoughts on the choice of title:

I think of a mythology as a framework through which we make sense of the world. In the distant past this framework contained Gods and Goddesses, who we had to appease in order for crops to grow. We were able to explain natural disasters and the general shit that life threw at us by telling ourselves we must be out of favour with the Gods. It was a coping mechanism.

The mythology of our times is very different, but it’s a mythology nonetheless, in the sense that it’s a belief system through which we understand reality. For the most part we don’t recognise it as a belief system, we think it’s just the way the world is. Like the fish in water metaphor: it’s the sea we’re swimming in, and we don’t even notice we’re in water.

Once we recognise our current mythology as a construct and not reality, we have a choice about whether to change the narrative. Concepts such as the Divine Right of Kings, once perceived as the natural order of things, now seem unthinkable. Homosexuality is now accepted as normal. If we’ve made these leaps in our collective thinking in the past, we can do it again. I’m particularly interested in the idea that the cultural norms which promote wealth above wellbeing could be changed.