After my event two weeks ago I have taken the excitement from a successful launch and started using it to figure out my next poetry book. I have decided the theme and layout and I have even decided the type of poetry. Never one to deny myself a challenge I have decided to try my hand at sonnet writing. Of course I started with research on types of sonnets because to be honest I have a strange weakness: I cannot seem to understand meter. Things like the iambic pentameter of a Shakespearean Sonnet escape me.

I can understand the theory of it: A metric line of verse with five metrical feet each consisting of one short syllable followed by one long syllable. In other words one line of ten syllables with the meter or rhythm of short-long times five.

I understand syllables very well and when it comes to music I understand rhythm or beat but when it comes to talking and writing I can’t seem to figure out how to tell if every syllable is short or long. In the line : Two households, both alike in dignity : I know that it follows iambic pentameter but only because I’ve been told it does. I don’t know how you can distinguish house as long and holds as short. My brain says they sound the same.

So I have decided I’m going to write my modern sonnets with 10 syllables and with a Shakespearean rhyming scheme but they will not be metered and now everyone knows why.