Forms from Chaos

This is a collection of forty-one sonnets together with twenty examples of villanelles, pantoum, Spenserian stanza, various ballad and rhyming couplet verses alongside “free verse” but the abiding focus is the sonnet both in Petrarchan and Elizabethan form.


The book’s introduction provides a concise account of the sonnet’s history with examples. Between each section of poems there are brief contextual comments.


From puppy training to philosophy, from self-pity to dancing, from AI to Wet Sand, from the Goodies to Shoe cleaning, the poems share immediate experiences and conjure magic from them. Day by day thoughts expand into polemics, the natural world, links to other poets and thinkers. The technical skills needed in poetic forms create strong structures through which powerful thoughts and emotions are distilled.