MARIA DUARTE recommends a remarkable study of the friendship between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, broken by a hostile state
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Why some poets can’t measure up to sonnet form
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PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
OF ALL the many projects this year marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, there can’t be many duller than On Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Bloomsbury, £12.99).
Editors Hannah Crawforth and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann have invited 30 Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature — apparently “some of the best poets working in English today” — to respond in verse to one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Between them the contributors have chosen to respond to 23 sonnets, the most popular being 60 (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”), 65 (“Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea”) and 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds”).
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