THE TRADITION OF SPECULATIVE POETRY is rich and deep. It’s also a minority pursuit. Yet Oliver K Langmead’s Calypso, a story of terraforming told in verse, looks set to gain far more attention than such a project usually might.
“It’s almost like writing in verse is like solving a puzzle,” says Langmead of his second verse novel after 2015’s Dark Star, “because every single line of it has to stick to a certain metre.” It’s a process, he adds, that “scratches” the part of his brain that “likes solving crossword puzzles”. In contrast, “writing in prose is like doing a painting on an infinite canvas.”
If that makes the book sound like a dry intellectual exercise, nothing could be further from the truth. Relating its story from four different perspectives, it’s a book that moves between the vastness of re-engineering an entire planet and the poignant details of our closest relationships.