“not the Sonnets” – Ian Gouge

not the SonnetsIan Gouge

Imagine tackling the entirety of Shakespeare’s sonnet cannon with the aim of creating a contemporary and modern interpretation of the poems both in terms of subject and form.

Imagine starting where most poets end – with the rhyme – and beginning each new poem by stripping out every single word from each of the Sonnets except the last one on each line.

Imagine that in tackling the pieces completely the other way around, the primary question became ‘what subject will fit a poem whose lines end with these exact words?’

Imagine a collection entitled not the Sonnets, one which has borrowed its scaffolding from the Bard to produce a sonnet sequence which is something else entirely…

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