Sonnet's Shakespeare is a bold, formally inventive collection in which poet Sonnet L'Abbé engages directly with Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Working line by line and letter by letter, L'Abbé uses the pages of the original poems as a space to claim, overwrite, and inhabit, gradually overwhelming Shakespeare’s voice with her own.
Writing from the perspective of a mixed South Asian and Black poet, L'Abbé wrestles with the colonial legacy of the English literary canon and the ways certain cultures come to dominate others. Each dense new poem "aggrocultures" a Shakespearean sonnet, displacing and speaking over it without entirely erasing the original presence.
Blending Oulipian constraint, erasure poetics, and raw, hyperconfessional lyric, the collection explores gender identity, trauma, pop music, nationhood, video games, and the search for interracial love. The result is both an artist’s long-developed project and an intimate diary of a body navigating oppression and privilege on stolen Indigenous territories.
Features and themes
- Radical reworking of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets
- Exploration of race, colonialism, and literary inheritance
- Hybrid of experimental constraint and personal lyric
- Engagement with contemporary culture, music, and media
- Ideal for readers of innovative and decolonial poetry
