Fairy Rock - Stephen Watt BLOG TOUR

When an invitation to participate in a blog tour for a crime novel in verse popped up in my inbox it was a challenge I simply couldn’t resist. Something innovative and different. Using verse to tell a story isn’t a new idea of course. But it does seem to be the domain of the more classic poets, one thinks of Coleridge, Browning and Longfellow to name but a few. Modern poetry hasn’t seemed to embrace the style as much. So it was a joy to receive this deceptively slender volume.

Okay, I hear you say, a novel in verse? That’s a contradiction in terms, surely? It suggests length and narrative and prose. Maybe. Who cares! When it comes down to it let’s not get too picky over genres and descriptors,and devices and styles, let’s enjoy and celebrate creativity and innovation.

Before getting to the meat of the text and the story it was interesting to consider how the telling of a crime story might lend itself to poetry. Poetry immediately suggests a textured language which can, but not always, be found in prose. It also suggests the rhythm of language, poetic linguistics inviting interpretation,and devices such as simile and metaphor which, of course, can be found in prose but the medium of poetry encourages such richness of language. For example;-

‘Car headlights cruised past,

beaming their lecherous eyes

down her knee-high boots,

the bronzed, palm-size, caramel-silk of her thighs.’

Yet a crime story suggests tight plotting and accurate research which somehow doesn't conform to initial thoughts of poets and verse.

So how does one go about reviewing a work such as this?  With a prose novel you look at aspects of character and structure etc., but will that work with poetry? Only one way to approach it as far as I’m concerned! Like for like! First for my blog. A review in verse! Here goes!

ABOUT

Tartan terror taunts,

Tortures the innocent reader

Like a symphony in stone.

Four from Glasgow, disparate, 

surviving this city with no crowns of thorns,

Knowing not what they’re doing,

Balancing on the tightrope of legality,

Hunched, bunched, scrunched

Mafia, raffia deals the blows

with geological grenades.

Vampire vamp

Ramps up the body count. 

Police place in the grasslands of floristry

a snitch witch, but

which way does the wind blow? 

Costello and Atkinson

Comedy duo or firm of solicitors? 

DS DI know?

THOUGHTS

A tale told with words a plenty

And poetry pictures to colour your mind.

Evocative images painting a scene to

Pillage the prose of conventional crime.

Pick up this book

And give it a look

Don't let it faze you.

Let it amaze you.

True to its roots

The words in cahoots

With a savagery of imagery
this poet doth suit.

Poetic diction 

not found in fiction.

You could do worse 

than read this verse!

My thanks to Kelly at LoveBooksTours for this fantastic opportunity. 

Please check out what other bloggers have to say about Fairy Rock.