Sonnet

 

This coming Monday we will travel to Wangaratta to attend the requiem for our friend Robert Whalley. Here in Australia many of us have known Rob for over twenty years. His calling to encourage and build community was a gift we all experienced, something he discovered for himself (and importantly others) in his previous life in California. Rob understood how this is done incrementally, at the grassroots, and in small ways as well as large. For me personally, this showed itself very directly in the early weeks of the pandemic. Considering the sudden reality of iso and in an inspired move to create community from simple play, he wrote to me from his fastness in Wangaratta with the idea of running an online Sonnet School. Even then, I grasped that Rob was also getting me to do something useful in the new unknown atmosphere of Covid, something to keep me occupied and alive to the possibilities in others. Inspired by the simplicity, but equally the sophistication, of such a long-distance social exercise, I composed an invitation. I copy this invitation out now, in honour of the Founder of Sonnet School, Robert Whalley: ‘SONNET SCHOOL. Posted on FB 19^th of March 2020. We think of the beautiful people of Italy who live in complete lockdown. Italy, as we learnt in school, invented the sonnet. Petrarch is the most famous early practitioner. The English went mad on the sonnet in the Renaissance, and the 20th century was even madder. “The lunatic, the lover and the poet/ Are of imagination all compact” according to Shakespeare, whose own relationship with the sonnet is pleasingly complex and an inspiring model. As we know from his plays, he also had a thing about Italy. Sonnet School is in, now that self-isolation and online learning are what we wake up to each day. My friend Robert Whalley writes: “I have a suggestion for these trying times: could you lead some of us, who’ve never had the courage to try a DIY sonnet, through the mechanics of said beast? We can even share our works in progress for your counsel.” So, I invite you to write a sonnet, with Robert’s suggested process as our guide. Let me know if you’d like to give it a go. There’s plenty of time to write your sonnet, and plenty of time to write more sonnets. Google ‘sonnet’ to find out how the form is constructed, then find a theme that suits your current mood. As I remarked in an earlier post, “The sonnet is one of the best forms as a trial exercise as you are stating an argument briefly but dramatically and you work with fun limits. The main fun limit is 14 lines, which means you only have 120-180 words to play with and must say everything with those words. I'll keep people posted on this mini-Decameron idea.” Text, message, email, whatever, I’m here to listen and advise, even though they are your words, not mine. The Decameron is a famous work of Italian literature written by Boccaccio, friend of the aforementioned sonneteer Petrarch. (See photograph of them chatting together, hands sanitised, and in suitable robes.) The Decameron’s context is a plague year in which people practising social distancing and self-isolation tell each other stories to while away the long hours indoors.’