Cirrus@Austlit

'This review of Linda Weste’s The Verse Novel: Australia & New Zealand forms a sequel to my review of her first selection of interviews with verse novel writers, Inside the Verse Novel: Writers on Writing (2020). Much like the earlier book, this iteration comprises an edited collection of interviews with 35 writers who have authored verse novels. Some have only written one verse novel, some are prolific poets as well as verse novelists and some are celebrated masters of the genre. Weste has conducted essentially the same interviews, with the same set of questions, providing strong continuity with the earlier volume. The questions address such aspects as the genesis of particular works, the writing process(es), any difficulties encountered along the way, and the privileging of narrative over poetic techniques and vice versa and why this was required or desired. The questions had sufficient breadth to elicit a reasonably comprehensive picture of writers’ perspectives on the form generally and on their own approach to writing.' (Introduction)