POETRY

2021 - A Yearful of Sonnets
There are 52 sonnets in this collection. No, I didn’t write one every week of the year, but that number seems appropriate somehow. Just as different weeks often have their own character – a lovely holiday one; a time when you can’t shake off gloom; weather (good or bad) that sticks around – so I shall visit different moods in this journey through the year 2021.
2021 was the year of the biggest COVID spike, but also of the vaccination programme. It was the year reality returned – with all the challenges and opportunities that brings. The countryside, of course, ignored all that and just kept on rolling through its usual, magnificent cycle of rebirth, flourishing and retreat.
Most of the sonnets have the ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme and iambic metre that Shakespeare used. You can’t beat that, really, but I try a few others in places, just for a bit of variety.