What do you think?
Rate this book
Sonnet's Shakespeare
Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award-winning poet Sonnet L'Abb� returns with her third collection, in which a mixed-race woman decomposes her inheritance of Shakespeare by breaking open the sonnet and inventing an entirely new poetic form.
How can poetry grapple with how some cultures assume the place of others? How can English-speaking writers use the English language to challenge the legacy of colonial literary values? In Sonnet's Shakespeare, one young, half-dougla (mixed South Asian and Black) poet tries to use "the master's tools" on the Bard's "house," attempting to dismantle his monumental place in her pysche and in the poetic canon.
In a defiant act of literary patricide and a feat of painstaking poetic labour, Sonnet L'Abb� works with the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets as a space she will inhabit, as a place of power she will occupy. Letter by letter, she sits her own language down into the white spaces of Shakespeare's poems, until she overwhelms the original text and effectively erases Shakespeare's voice by subsuming his words into hers. In each of the 154 dense new poems of Sonnet's Shakespeare sits one "aggrocultured" Shakespearean sonnet--displaced, spoken over, but never entirely silenced.
L'Abb� invented the process of Sonnet's Shakespeare to find a way to sing from a body that knows both oppression and privilege. She uses the procedural techniques of Oulipian constraint and erasure poetries to harness the raw energies of her hyperconfessional, trauma-forged lyric voice. This is an artist's magnum opus and mixed-race girlboy's diary; the voice of a settler on stolen Indigenous territories, a sexual assault survivor, a lover of Sylvia Plath and Public Enemy. Touching on such themes as gender identity, pop music, nationhood, video games, and the search for interracial love, this book is a poetic achievement of undeniable scope and significance.
How can poetry grapple with how some cultures assume the place of others? How can English-speaking writers use the English language to challenge the legacy of colonial literary values? In Sonnet's Shakespeare, one young, half-dougla (mixed South Asian and Black) poet tries to use "the master's tools" on the Bard's "house," attempting to dismantle his monumental place in her pysche and in the poetic canon.
In a defiant act of literary patricide and a feat of painstaking poetic labour, Sonnet L'Abb� works with the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets as a space she will inhabit, as a place of power she will occupy. Letter by letter, she sits her own language down into the white spaces of Shakespeare's poems, until she overwhelms the original text and effectively erases Shakespeare's voice by subsuming his words into hers. In each of the 154 dense new poems of Sonnet's Shakespeare sits one "aggrocultured" Shakespearean sonnet--displaced, spoken over, but never entirely silenced.
L'Abb� invented the process of Sonnet's Shakespeare to find a way to sing from a body that knows both oppression and privilege. She uses the procedural techniques of Oulipian constraint and erasure poetries to harness the raw energies of her hyperconfessional, trauma-forged lyric voice. This is an artist's magnum opus and mixed-race girlboy's diary; the voice of a settler on stolen Indigenous territories, a sexual assault survivor, a lover of Sylvia Plath and Public Enemy. Touching on such themes as gender identity, pop music, nationhood, video games, and the search for interracial love, this book is a poetic achievement of undeniable scope and significance.
- GenresPoetryCanadaShakespeare
192 pages, Paperback
First published August 20, 2019
3 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Sonnet L'Abbé
7 books20 followersSonnet L'Abbé is a Canadian poet and critic.
As a poet, L'Abbé writes about national identity, race, gender and language. She has been shortlisted for the 2010 CBC Literary Award for poetry and has won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35.
As a critic, she has been a regular reviewer of fiction and poetry for The Globe and Mail and has written scholarly articles on Canadian contemporary poetry. In, 2013 she was the Artist-In-Motion for 2017 Starts Now!, a series of talks that joined Canadians across the country in a conversation about how to celebrate the Canadian sesquicentennial.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, L'Abbé has a PhD in English Literature from the University of British Columbia, a Master's degree in English literature from the University of Guelph and a BFA in film and video from York University. She has been a script reader and has taught English at universities in South Korea and as well as teaching Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. She has also worked as an assistant poetry editor at Canadian Literature, and is an occasional contributor to CBC Radio One and the National Post. She currently teaches creative writing at UBC's Okanagan campus.
Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals and several anthologies including Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010, Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, and Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Woman's Poetry.
As a poet, L'Abbé writes about national identity, race, gender and language. She has been shortlisted for the 2010 CBC Literary Award for poetry and has won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35.
As a critic, she has been a regular reviewer of fiction and poetry for The Globe and Mail and has written scholarly articles on Canadian contemporary poetry. In, 2013 she was the Artist-In-Motion for 2017 Starts Now!, a series of talks that joined Canadians across the country in a conversation about how to celebrate the Canadian sesquicentennial.
Born in Toronto, Ontario, L'Abbé has a PhD in English Literature from the University of British Columbia, a Master's degree in English literature from the University of Guelph and a BFA in film and video from York University. She has been a script reader and has taught English at universities in South Korea and as well as teaching Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. She has also worked as an assistant poetry editor at Canadian Literature, and is an occasional contributor to CBC Radio One and the National Post. She currently teaches creative writing at UBC's Okanagan campus.
Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals and several anthologies including Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009, The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010, Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets, and Red Silk: An Anthology of South Asian Woman's Poetry.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 8, 2022
This book is magnificent and technical in equal measure. I have too many favourites to cite here.
L'Abbé should be as well known as Amanda Gorman.
L'Abbé should be as well known as Amanda Gorman.
December 10, 2020
Here's how you talk back to the canon! Each poem had me surprised and delighted to see how Sonnet would superimpose her own take of the world today.
September 29, 2023
A staggering piece of technical accomplishment but also a culturally relevant examination of colonialism, power and inclusion.
I have no idea how you would go about writing a book of poetry like this one, which is exploding and reworking Shakespeare's classic sonnets, but also telling personal stories.
It's incredible.
"Being with your rock" is my favourite, probably because it takes place on the University of Waterloo's campus, but there are so many deep wells in this book to plumb.
If there's any justice in this world, critics will be writing analysis of L'Abbé's work for centuries.
I have no idea how you would go about writing a book of poetry like this one, which is exploding and reworking Shakespeare's classic sonnets, but also telling personal stories.
It's incredible.
"Being with your rock" is my favourite, probably because it takes place on the University of Waterloo's campus, but there are so many deep wells in this book to plumb.
If there's any justice in this world, critics will be writing analysis of L'Abbé's work for centuries.
April 29, 2020
L’Abbé’s sonnets glimmer in their take-down of oppressive structures, vitalised by musicality and ingenuity—in both thematic and linguistic veins. It is impossible to touch on every thread, every story paralleled by another story, every layered moment. Poems are sometimes meditative and enriched by tense depictions of land or playful commentaries on technology. Others feel like a caress, contained in moments of family and tenderness, in sweet homages to dear friends. The collection is intimate, at times brutally honest, but also always a map for our own imaginative readings.
September 18, 2020
I really admire this book, so much that I wrote a short essay on one of its poems:
https://howapoemmoves.wordpress.com/2...
https://howapoemmoves.wordpress.com/2...
June 7, 2020
Such a delight to read and a workout for the tongue as well! This is the fun kind of poetry you have to read aloud!
April 24, 2021
I bow to L'Abbé's poetic mastery. Not only are these poems astounding on an individual level, but the collection also has a sense of narrative and progression of time that gives the poems an additional depth. From critiquing colonial structures to sharing glimpses into the personal to adding a touch of humour to documenting events that have happened, "Sonnet's Shakespeare" contains infinite depth and deserves infinite love.
October 21, 2021
(Yawn) Standard woke deconstruction of Western literature (and history). Don't bother.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews