Notes on the Sonnets

Winner of The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021 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

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation