Love's Sonnets

There’s a structure within the structure of this sonnet. The quatrains are all self-contained: the first two lines of each establishes a premise, then is separated from the remaining two lines with a semicolon; the third line begins with ‘So’ followed by a verb to respond to that premise; and each quatrain is closed with… Continue reading Love Letters 9: Our Chance

In this sonnet I have used caesura to represent the “misaligned” nature of myself and the addressee. Caesura is a pause or break in a line of poetry. The word comes from the from past participle stem of the Latin ‘caedere’ – ‘to cut’. ‘Misaligned’ is an extended metaphor of two bridges being built across an “estuary”.… Continue reading Love Letters 8: Misaligned

The Shakespearian sonnet provides substantial structure: 14 lines comprised of three quatrains with a capping couplet, iambic pentameter, adabcdcdefefgg rhyme scheme, capping couplet regularly offering a riposte or summation that invites the reader to find a deeper meaning. This sonnet has an even tighter structure; the first two lines of each quatrain present an animal… Continue reading Love Letters 7: Stubborn Beast

This Love Letter is an extended metaphor: it credits the addressee with having built the narrator into a giant statue, then helped them come to life. A Titan. The first quatrain describes the “mound” and “foundations” on which a statue is to be built. The second quatrain details the process of creating a statue capable… Continue reading Love Letters 6: Moving Monument

Like all activities in life, some sonnets are hard graft, some flow. Those two experiences are related. Sometimes early graft provides later ease; sometimes early ease engenders later graft. I spent a long time thinking about this sonnet. The process of writing it was fluid and fast. Rhyme appears in several forms. In addition to… Continue reading Love Letters 5: Disappearance

An adage from my advertising days was, if you want people to catch one ball… throw them one ball. Throw them ten and they’ll catch the wrong one. Or none. This axiom is as important in creative writing. A poem with several points is a roll of barbed wire; a poem with one point is… Continue reading Love Letters 4: Justice

Having avoided hyperbole in last week’s sonnet, I’ve rediscovered my affection for this linguistic technique. This change reminds me how my mood affects my writing; one day I might like a form of expression, another day I might detest it. It’s a poet’s prerogative! This Love Letter is dedicated to someone I admire; someone who… Continue reading Love Letters 3: Beacon

I’ll keep this short because I’m on holiday with family; this collection is proving the hardest to write. I thought practising writing sonnets would have made the process easier. But it’s not the process that’s hard with my Love Letters collection, it’s the sentiment. Each sonnet in this collection is a letter to someone I… Continue reading Love Letters 2: Alchemist

This is the first of my fourth and final series of fourteen sonnets: love letters. Each of these sonnets is a letter to someone, or something, I love, or have loved. Deeply. I will not reveal who, or what, each letter is dedicated to. ‘We River’ is an extended metaphor. It begins with theft from… Continue reading Love Letters 1: We River