Ben Doyle and Sandra Miller
from The Sonneteers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Sonneteers (a 50 "sonnet" sequence, a demi-corona) were constructed between August 2004-December 2004 as part of a relationship-experiment (ongoing). The first Sonneteer spontaneously combusted in the apartment of Biswamit Dwibedy, who had a Shakespeare sonnet in his typewriter. Turning this sonnet 90 degrees in the typewriter allowed space for the birth of the Sonneteer—with each of us writing alternate lines, messing with rhyme scheme, playing with the instantaneity of the art object-verbal object as a performative mode. (In the case of the first sonneteer, someone was reading from the book of Revelations in a thick brogue). In the ensuing sonneteers, ink was spilled, more typewriters were deployed, and simultaneous sonneteering occurred. A dialogue emerged not just between the writers and their slant-rhymed couplets, but also between the found-art-papers and the texts. We're particularly attracted to the dual notion of the "sonneteer" as a sonnet-writer and as a shoddy poet, and sought to push these boundaries in our multiple resistances to form and regiment. We're grateful to Biswamit Dwibedy for the initial party impulse, and for many of the papers. Other papers have been constructed and generously contributed by the sonneteers themselves, as well as Sarah Doyle, Scott Inguito, the Toyota Company, The New Yorker, a jump rope, a slipper, Sandra Bullock and Ben Affleck, with cameo appearances by Srikanth Chicu Reddy and Louise Glück.

Sonneteers are also appearing in Play No/Play, Area Sneaks, OxMag, Disaster3, and Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets.