For almost fifty years, Alan Wearne has been one of Australia’s pre-eminent users of dramatic monologue. Since The Nightmarkets (1986), he has also become one of our most persistent and accomplished writers of verse novels. It is a form which to many seems paradoxical (how can something be two contradictory things at once?), and yet it is undeniably capable of producing fast-moving and powerful narratives which remain vividly present in the mind.

Of course, it’s a difficult trick to pull off, requiring not only the psychological insight and narrative facility needed by ‘ordinary’ novelists, but also the metaphoric and linguistic agility of a poet. The texture needs to be denser than prose (otherwise what’s the point?), but if it is too dense the narrative momentum will stall.