Invitation to Book Launch - Collected Sonnets
Listen@Lunch
Gawler Public Library
August 21st 2022
12 - 1pm
Jeff Guess. Born in Adelaide, Jeff Guess has taught senior English and tutored poetry at TAFE, and the Uni, of SA. His first book LeavingMaps appeared in 1984 and was hailed by Judith Rodriguez in The Sydney Morning Herald as 'a major collection'. Since then, sixteen collections have been published. His new collection Collected Sonnets is being launched at Listen@Lunch. He has written three textbooks on teaching poetry, edited nine poetry anthologies. He has won numerous prizes for his poetry and been awarded six writing grants.
Les Murray has written: ‘I admire his work. I find it tender and perceptive, unafraid to show feeling. It's also inventive, with an eye for the angles of experience in which poetry can catch and accumulate.’
Samela Harris (The Advertiser) has written: ‘Methinks he is the finest living Australian poet.’
Collected Sonnets by Jeff Guess
A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhyme scheme. Often, sonnets use iambic pentameter: five sets of unstressed syllables followed by stressed syllables for a ten-syllable line. The two most common sonnet variations are the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet The main difference between the Italian and English sonnet is in the rhyme schemes they use. Jeff Guess employs other more modern variations as well. The word sonnet is derived from the very old phrase sonet meaning ‘little song.’
