40 Sonnets

This collection of forty sonnets won the 2015 Costa Poetry Award. It is Don Paterson's first collection since the Forward Prize–winning Rain in 2009. The sonnets employ both traditional and experimental forms, unified by Paterson's lyrical intelligence and musical gift. The poems are addressed to friends and enemies, the living and the dead, children, musicians, poets, and dogs. They explore a wide range of concerns and tonal registers, with voices emerging from various settings: blackout, airlock, storm cave, séance, coal shed, war, highway, forest, and sea. These voices express frustration with distance and darkness. Throughout the collection, Paterson returns to central themes including contradiction and strangeness, tension and transformation, the dream world, and the divided self.