Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit is a skilful exploration of the white lie; the schoolyard rumour; the gap in the narrative.

The collection opens by addressing the untruths that coloured Neale’s childhood. 'Porky' narrates her earliest fibs, while 'Like girls were hot soft scones' lightly mocks the teachings of religion. One highlight, 'In the nodding grass beneath the cat’s-cradle clothesline, my hand an open perch' centres not a lie but an unfulfilled wish. Neale figures herself an agent of 'slow-burn disaster'; a child masking, perhaps, her feelings of power as feelings of tenderness.

Lovely language abounds in this book. Sweets appear several times, a shorthand for something illicit — the 'aniseed sweet' in 'Mask', the 'sucked sweet' in 'Player', the 'mint or barley sugar' lollies in 'Androphobia'. This last poem is an eloquent indictment of abusers and systems that shield them: 'It begins when the child finds deceit / turns to truth if certain adults use it.'

Liar is not all play, and satisfyingly so. Neale takes aim at injustice, at how people ignore inequality ('Spare Change') or 'use[...] words / like disguises to distract and dissemble' ('Scapegoat'). Ultimately, though, these engaging, empathetic poems remind us of our shared humanity, including our shared imperfections.

Mask

If every fiction tells a secret
without revealing it,
if it both dispels and creates
a little more mystery
than exists
before it unravels
like red flame that frets
through white wax paper
that conceals an aniseed sweet,
let me here confess
the worst deception
I ever committed
I entered into unwillingly
in that, from the moment
an infant first discovers
the power in a mock cry,
it is given
a false identity
as witness protection
from which the only release
will be as on a stage set
when a cloak swirls
to reveal
a dropped mask
rocking gently
to and fro on the floorboards
like an empty rowboat
ghosting with a diver’s spring,
now moored and
lit by silence.