Awards

• Commended for Rathbones Folio Prize 2022
• Short-listed for The Forward Prizes for Poetry 2021 2021
• Winner of The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021
• Winner of The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021
• Winner of The Forward Prizes for Poetry 2021 2021

Overview

"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"

Full Product Details

9781908058812

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Reviews

'Joyously unclassifiable.' -The Guardian, 'Kennard's book, this endless party talk, is as riddling and enjoyable as the old sonnets on which it riffs. Think of it as the ideal cabaret: it never coheres, it never wants to, and it'll never leave you at a loss for fun.' - Five stars, The Telegraph, 'Consistently entertaining ... (Kennard's) most mature and emotionally vulnerable collection yet.'-Tristram Fane Saunders, TLS, '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, 'Family life, doubt and faith, society, people, writers, social commentary, dark matter and string theory, the world at large, are all covered at some pace, each poem containing laugh-aloud ideas but also deep and considered moments which sneak up and surprise you ... extraordinary and original.'- Rupert Loydell, International Times

Author Information

Luke Kennard has published five collections of poetry. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005 and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2007. He lectures at the University of Birmingham. In 2014 he was selected by the Poetry Book Society as one of the Next Generation Poets. His debut novel, The Transition, was published in 2017 by Fourth Estate.

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