Anglophone Verse Novels as Gutter Texts: Postcolonial Literature and the Politics of Gaps

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Anglophone Verse Novels as Gutter Texts draws on the notion of the gutter in graphic narratives the gap between panels that a reader has to imaginatively fill to generate narrative sequence to analyse the largely overlooked literary form of the verse novel. Marked at all levels by the tense constellation of segment and sequence, and a conspicuously 'gappy' texture, verse novels offer productive alternatives to the dominant prose novel in contemporary fiction, where a similar gappiness has become a hallmark, as illustrated by the loosely interlaced multi-strand plot structures of influential world novels (Bolao, Mitchell, Powers). The verse novel is a form particularly prolific in the postcolonial world and among diasporic or minoritarian writers in the Global North. This study concentrates on two of the most prominent areas in which verse novels distinguish themselves from the prose novel to read texts by Derek Walcott, Anne Carson, Bernadine Evaristo, Patience Agbabi and others: In planetary verse novels from the Caribbean, Canada, Samoa and Hawaii, the central trope of the volcano evokes a world in constant un/making; while post-national verse novels, particularly in Britain, modify the established paradigms of imagined communities. Dirk Wiemann's study speculates whether the resurgence of verse novels correlates with the apprehension of inhabiting a world that has become unpredictable and dangerous but also promising: a post-prosaic world.

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A lucid, conceptually rich and erudite intervention which brings into focus the aberrant, off-beat genre of the Anglophone verse novel. Drawing attention to a flourishing bibliodiversity, Anglophone Verse Novels as Gutter Texts acts against the persistent centring of the novel as the pre-eminent form of literary world-making in postcolonial and world literature scholarship, thus offering a significant re-assessment of the field. Through a careful analysis of the social implications of gappy form, Dirk Wieman fashions a compelling and layered argument about the verse novels propensity to imagine alternative, unfinished social worlds and undecided futures. * Corinne Sandwith, Professor of English, University of Pretoria, South Africa *
Wiemanns wonderfully stimulating study ranges across the globe from the Global South to the post-Imperial metropolis, offering scintillating glimpses of little studied but vibrant and timely genre, the contemporary verse novel. Above all, Wiemann gives us new and vital insights into the relationship between literary form and the sociopolitical realities of our violent times. * Russell West-Pavlov, Professor of Anglophone Literatures, University of Tbingen, Germany *
Wiemann identifies an important and under-examined segment of the postcolonial canon the verse-novel and provides an eloquent defense and analysis of key works in that form, emphasizing the interconnectedness of formal and ideological analysis. A valuable expansion of the discourse of the world novel beyond the usual suspects. * Alexander Beecroft, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of South Carolina, USA *

Author Bio

Dirk Wiemann is Chair in English Literature at University of Potsdam, Germany. He is author of Genres of Modernity: Contemporary Indian Novels in English (2008) and Postcolonial Literatures in English: An Introduction (2019, with Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein and Nicole Waller), and editor of numerous collections, including Postcolonial Justice (2017, with Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein and Nicole Waller).