[Clive Watkins]

Helen Dunmore, a winner of several awards for poetry and of the Orange Prize for Fiction...
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth103

Regards

Clive Watkins

[Howard]

Michael Ondaatje
Anne Michaels
Czeslaw Milosz

[This message has been edited by Howard (edited March 25, 2006).]

[B.J. Preston]

John Burnside – Haven’t read any of the novels, but the poetry is rich and satisfying (unusually, I like the majority of the poems in the two collections of his I have).

[Steven Schroeder]

Here's a Melville I like:

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw,
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril's abroad,
And asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat -
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat

[Susan McLean]

Ursula Le Guin is one of my favorite novelists, who has a very poetic way with language. She writes creditable poetry, too, though I don't think it is quite a match for her novels. She tries her hand at almost everything--short stories, plays, essays, too--and I think that allows her to find the form that fits the idea, whatever kind of idea she gets.

Susan

[Steven Schroeder]

Jane Yolen, a fantasy novelist (mostly kid or young adult work), got quite a bit of acclaim for her series of "Radiation Sonnets," which were about her husband's bout with a brain tumor.

Also, Joe Haldeman, author of the Hugo Award-winning The Forever War, has written and published quite a bit of poetry.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

[This message has been edited by Steven Schroeder (edited March 26, 2006).]

[Howard]

Eric Temple Bell, mathematician who was a close friend of Einstein and who published almost two dozen science fiction novels and a host of short stories between the late 20's and mid-50's had, at the time of his death, a 700-page typescript of a narrative poem entitled The Scarlet Night. To my knowledge, it's never been published. I don't know if he wrote other poetry or not.

[Janet Kenny]

How many Eratosphereans have written novels?

Published or unpublished.

Janet

[FOsen]

Anthony Burgess, whose Byrne isn't as good as Seth's Golden Gate, but is more ambitious and more Byronic.

-- Frank

[Marilyn Taylor]

Janet, what an interesting question! In my case the answer is NOT ME-- I find that I am totally incapable of creating what is breezily referred to as "plot." Even a bad one. I'd be exceedingly interested, though, in hearing from those who don't share this handicap with me, and who would perhaps explain what motivates them to turn to one genre or the other.

Also-- has anyone attempted a novel in verse?

Marilyn