Mx Carson, in the library, with the pen
What connects poetry and crime?
“Ah hah, we say at the end of a poem. Ah hah, we say when we reach the page when all is revealed in a crime novel.
….. both crimes and poems UNFOLD, but there’s another deeper connection. Poets and detectives are both archaeologists. They need to explore beneath the surface, to find what exists but is not readily visible, to reveal what can be known, but is not yet known. Poets and detectives are archaeologists of the hidden, the secret, the private, THE SUBVERSIVE. They peel away the layers, the disguises that hide crimes, hide criminals, hide ourselves, and eventually they come to the central nub, the raw heart, the truth of a crime.
Anne Carson’s poems intrigue like crime novels intrigue, they characterise the investigating detective, just like the novels, but because they are poems, features are condensed and magnified. She puts in a half page what we prose writers would stretch to a chapter.”
From Andrea Goldsmith’s launch of The Detective’s Chair
