Bibliograph

Notes on the sonnets, Luke Kennard

Type

Label

Notes on the sonnets, Luke Kennard

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Notes on the sonnets

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Luke Kennard

Summary

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021 Longlisted for the Rathbones folio prize A Poetry Book society Recommendation Luke Kennard recasts Shakespeare's 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party. A physicist explains dark matter in the kitchen. A crying man is consoled by a Sigmund Freud action figure. An out-of-hours doctor sells phials of dark red liquid from a briefcase. Someone takes out a guitar. Wry, insolent and self-eviscerating, Notes on the Sonnets riddles the Bard with the anxieties of the modern age, bringing Kennard's affectionate critique to subjects as various as love, marriage, God, metaphysics and a sad horse. 'Luke Kennard has the uncanny genius of being able to stick a knife in your heart with such originality and verve that you start thinking "aren't knives fascinating... and hearts, my god!" whilst everything slowly goes black.' - Caroline Bird

Target audience

adult

Classification