Notes on the Sonnets Luke Kennard

Shortlisted for 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

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