Notes on The Sonnets

Notes on The Sonnets Synopsis

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021Longlisted for the Rathbones folio prizeA Poetry Book society RecommendationLuke 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 "e;aren't knives fascinating... and hearts, my god!"e; whilst everything slowly goes black.'- Caroline Bird